Emmanuel Macron toasts. Then another. Fourteen of his former advisers celebrate, this September 27, their farewell party in the salons of the Elysée. “I know what I owe you”, confides the President of the Republic to those closest to him. Among the guests is the first walking companion: Richard Ferrand, former President of the National Assembly who was severely beaten in the June legislative elections. The Head of State pays tribute to him, too. The ex-elected Finistère is however not there to celebrate his withdrawal.
The next day, he returned to the Palace, at the dinner of the heads of the presidential majority, to give the “the” on the method of pension reform. That evening, the former holder of the perch was the first to mention the threat of dissolution which, in his eyes, could discipline the Assembly; Emmanuel Macron approves and asks his communicators to let it be known. Richard Ferrand already had his napkin ring at the political back-to-school dinner on 1is September, and that of the Renaissance leaders, at the end of August. His voice remains listened to, as “before”.
Without a mandate, he strolls through Paris from Tuesday to Thursday, from his bachelor apartment in the Opéra district where he reads The Red and the Black, before rejoining his wife and children in his former constituency. Bitter ? Occasionally. Many elected representatives of the majority describe him as ruminating on his electoral setback against an unknown 38-year-old socialist.
Blues
The former Socialist Party (PS) had felt his own defeat coming. “Christophe is cooked, and I have very hot buttocks”he confided to the Head of State, referring to another faithful, Christophe Castaner, who will be beaten in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. “You are pessimistic”, had wanted to reassure the president. But the intuition of the Brestois was the right one: thirty years of swept away career. As if the second razor blade had mowed him down, after the failure of the regionals in Brittany, in 2021. A great void followed.
At the beginning of October, his vagueness in the soul dissipates. An actress, crossed by chance at the Cercle interallié, challenged him to have his film projected at the Elysée. “I will pass on the message”, promised the intimate of the head of state, flattered. Proof that the sexagenarian still counts. He no longer appears in the organization chart of power but exchanges every week with the Head of State who, a rare privilege, listens to him attentively. “Whoever tells you that Macron is listening to you is a show-off”has always underestimated the person concerned who refused an official post of Elysian adviser and the “wages of gossip”.
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