Time.news — It took a lot of patience to listen to Ms. Borne the other day at the National Assembly. And if I didn’t go to the end of his speech on general policy, I seem to have heard enough to form my own idea.
Ah! Admittedly, a gaiter button was not missing. All subjects were discussed, from insecurity which “still worries our fellow citizens” (hold on!) to sovereignty (“a stronger Europe means a stronger France”), including Ukraine, purchasing power, housing, the debt which will begin to fall in… 2026, full employment “within our reach”, pensions, ecology, gas supplies, “saving” culture, the sport, health which must be of “quality” (vast programme!), disability, overseas territories, prisons. And I’m sure I’m forgetting some.
In short, a catalog of good intentions (who would have bad ones?), a technocratic speech (how many times did she tell us that she had been prefect?), and it is indeed technocracy that is in command. Beginning her remarks, the Prime Minister had launched: “It is to France that I speak”. We must believe that she did not speak very well to him, if we judge by the poor appreciation which was made of it by the French people.
Of course, measures will be taken. What government wouldn’t? But in this long speech, too long speech, there was not the least breath, the least national ambition. And Elisabeth Borne’s attitude was revealing: power has chosen – sweet understatement! – to act as if, to act as if he had not suffered a merciless setback in the legislative elections. Against bad electoral fortune, he is a good-hearted politician.
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The Prime Minister thus declares that for too long, our public life had resulted in clashing blocs, when she would have liked to have an absolute majority of deputies, and that is the characteristic of large democracies that there is a majority and an opposition, the majority supporting the power of its votes, and the opposition doing its best to become a majority through an alternation.
In this summer of 2022, we are warned: it is “a new page” which is beginning, “that of the majorities of projects”, and Ms. Borne has stormed smiles and contortions towards the presidents of the parliamentary groups that she will need to conduct national policy.
48 hours after his speech in the National Assembly, the President of the Court of Auditors and the Governor of the Banque de France sounded the alarm. The time of “whatever it takes”, which allowed the re-election of Mr. Macron, is well and truly over. The trap closes on the Head of State. It is up to him to restore order in the affairs, and in the accounts, of the “house” France. The site is huge, especially if there is “no tax increase”, as promised by Ms. Borne.