We are waiting for the government. Tick-tock, tick-tock. The wait is becoming unbearable. For Easter or for Trinity? At the latest, Sunday: like the white rabbit ofAlice in WonderlandMichel Barnier is late. He is not a six-week-old rabbit, but he could well be taken for a ride. Already, he deplores the seriousness of the budgetary situation of the debt like a new owner cheated by a dry rot that the mandatory diagnostics would have underestimated.
As for the new ministers, to stay in the register of short-haired and big-eared, everything suggests that Emmanuel Macron – whose name rhymes with sleight of hand – will pull rabbits out of the hat, and that they will look like twins to the old ones, who we thought had been driven away.
Call him Garcimacron, or Emmanuel Majax. Out of 16 ministers proposed by Michel Barnier, 10 would be Macronists and the impression of novelty will only be due to the transfer window and musical chairs. Will Rachida Dati stay in culture or will she join National Education? There is also talk of Viollette Spillebout for this position. By a sleight of hand, the name of François-Xavier Bellamy, at one time expected, pfffttt, has disappeared. But what a surprise!
The last shall be first
The first will be last, and vice versa. Perhaps because his first name is Emmanuel, the President followed the evangelical injunction: by appointing Barnier, he allowed the LR, dunce’s caps of the elections, to climb onto the podium of the selection. The miracle-working president works miracles: he resurrects the political dead. Unless, like Saint Louis, he makes in fine Justice: Hetzel, Genevrard, Retailleau, Garnier… these are Fillon’s close associates who are being called: victory was stolen from them in a completely anti-democratic way, and it is in the same way that it has been returned to them today.
Let us note two thunderous outbursts… demanded by the RN, which has put the gun of censorship on Michel Barnier’s time: Éric Dupont-Moretti and Gérald Darmanin. One will be able to return to playing table football with the delinquents. As for the other, we know nothing about the leisure activities he intends to indulge in from now on, but we cannot advise him too strongly against attending British football stadiums, some supporters dishonoured by him may not have forgiven him yet.
… and two interesting potential arrivals: Bruno Retailleau at the Interior and Laurence Garnier at the Family. A right of the right, a pleonasm that has long since revealed itself to be an oxymoron.
Already, the pack is unleashed: an extract showing Bruno Retailleau evoking “Paper French” is circulating on social networks. As for Laurence Garnier, her past participation in La Manif Pour Tous and her refusal to constitutionalize abortion make her a target marked with a hot iron to be killed. Emmanuel Macron is said to have demanded her head for these reasons.
Hours of truth
This is the first moment of truth for Michel Barnier: will he give in, will he not? Does he have a free hand or is he subservient? Will he give in to the vociferations of the left which, like Mathilde Panot, is already crying out about a “extreme right-wing shift of Macronie” ? It was a costume that brought down Fillon, it is by tailoring a suit to his team that the left intends to eject him. It should be noted that the witch hunt always comes from the good left and never from the bad right, which did not flinch when the name of a Raphaël Arnault supporter was circulated. The Republican barrier is like the belt around Paris: there is the big one, around the RN, and the small one around LR.
The second moment of truth, even if this government thus constituted were to overcome the innumerable obstacles that still strewn its path – how will the RN react, for example to the re-election of Agnès Pannier-Runacher – this time to ecology – who had refused to shake the hand of the youngest RN MP? – will be the test of facts: presumed insincere, weighed down by the disastrous record of the great talker, little doer Nicolas Sarkozy, the chance to redeem themselves that is given to the LR is unexpected, if they do not seize it, it will not come again. Will they be able, tied hand and foot, to do better than Nicolas Sarkozy who had all the powers? How will the team pulling this way and that Retailleau-Migaud, if it is confirmed, be able to succeed where that of Darmanin-Dupont-Moretti failed?
The French, after having shown in a poll all the hopes they placed in Michel Barnier, should not quickly regret the in-between period of the last few months which, in its immobility, had a certain charm. A sort of enchanted interlude – oh time suspend your flight! – during which nothing happened, like in Sleeping Beauty’s castle. And nothing is not nothing, as Raymond Devos would say. Because there is less than nothing: it is worse. And already, there is talk of increasing taxes…
If Michel Barnier disappoints, LR will not be dead, it already was. It will be buried, for eternity. It is up to the Prime Minister to show that he does not lack this precious organ of which, according to the famous formula of the late president who called him, it seems, the “ski instructor”, we are so short of donors for transplants, especially in politics. Ski instructors know how to go down the slopes, here it is a question of going back up. He saved Emmanuel Macron, but will he be able to save France?
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