2023-08-29 12:00:12
Surrounded by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin (left) and Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne greets an acquaintance during the speech by the President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region Renaud Muselier, in Tourcoing (North), August 27, 2023. MICHAëL ZUMSTEIN / AGENCY SEEN FOR “THE WORLD”
In 2016, the “great march” that launched the presidential campaign that led to his election had allowed Emmanuel Macron to forge a conviction: politics, punctuated by artificial divisions, according to him, was deeply rejected by the French and source of all democratic evils (disaffection and abstention, voting for extremes, etc.). By bringing the “start-up nation” to the baptismal font, the young President of the Republic had therefore tried to depoliticize, to erase ideological divisions. He had appointed a slew of technical ministers, mostly from civil society, with no background or political culture, « experts » focused on the “reform” in the service of a supposed general interest, and had boasted “amateurism” to its deputies.
Macronism was intended to be the seductive face of a proactive high public service in search of efficiency, far from the pretenses of the political game. A Saint-Simonist dream, in short, either “to replace the government of men by the administration of things”. “I don’t like politics, I like to do”, had entrusted Emmanuel Macron to the writer Philippe Besson (A novel character, Julliard, 2017), describing elected officials as “traders who hold a piece of street”.
First warning shot a year ago, the legislative elections brought it back to reality: tired by this permanent “at the same time”, which ended up making them dizzy, the French wanted to reintroduce division and clarity, even if it had to go through a form of radicality. In July, the reshuffle of the government, which saw the departure of many technical ministers in favor of more political appointments, also signed a “return of politics”, as government spokesman Olivier Véran himself noted. Today, this return to school marked by the offensive – unprecedented in Macronie – by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who has displayed his singularity and set an ambition, is part of the same logic. A sequence with the flavor of the “old world”, which recalls the strategy of “rupture” undertaken by his mentor Nicolas Sarkozy with regard to Jacques Chirac, twenty years ago.
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On the form too, Mr. Darmanin, who has never adhered to the sanitized codes of the “start-up nation” and always pleaded for “more bistros and less visios”, scripted his comeback, Sunday in Tourcoing (North), as in the past: plastic cups and sausage and fries, hugs and clasped hands, ballet of white shirts with rolled up sleeves, reviving with a chiraco-Sarkozyist gesture – “the epic” of Jacques Chirac, at “cow’s ass” – assuming that politics is also made of flesh and blood. Even the austere and reputed “ultra-techno” Elisabeth Borne, who reframed her interior minister on Sunday, enjoining him to first obtain results, on the insecurity front in particular, split for the occasion of a skillful speech, undoubtedly one of the most political since his arrival at Matignon, asserting himself as the true leader of the majority.
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