“Between Elisabeth Borne and Emmanuel Macron, dissonances are more and more frequent”

2023-05-15 05:30:18

EHe celebrates his one year at Matignon on Tuesday May 16. Elisabeth Borne has nothing planned for this bitter anniversary. What would this prime minister on borrowed time want to celebrate, who goes through impossible challenges, while seeing her authority challenged and her image damaged?

Tuesday and Wednesday, she must try to renew the dialogue with unions still on edge, who are calling for a new day of mobilization, June 6, on the eve of the examination by the deputies of a bill aimed at repealing pension reform. The effect of a favorable vote – a scenario that at the top of the state, we do not exclude – would be deflagrating, including for her.

Above all, relations with Emmanuel Macron have deteriorated a lot. Elisabeth Borne supports more and more badly the calendar injunctions of the president of the Republic: ” three weeks “ to concert and try to“expand the majority”, “hundred days” pour “appease”… dry warnings (“I hope she will succeed”), without the slightest word of gratitude for the work accomplished – twenty-seven texts voted on in one year – in a political context of rare complexity. On April 26, the Head of State even asked Elisabeth Borne to present her new roadmap from… the Elysée, remake implied by “I decide, he executes” by Jacques Chirac with Nicolas Sarkozy.

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The Prime Minister also suffers from seeing her vital space vampirized by a vibrating president who takes all the light – he will be on Monday evening on TF1 – including on the files that she herself had to carry.

Between the two heads of the executive, the disagreements are becoming more and more frequent (and noisy), often to the disadvantage of Elisabeth Borne: on immigration – she had announced a postponement of the text, finally put back on the job at the president’s request –; on taxation – she wanted to make a « pause » in tax cuts, finally confirmed by Mr. Macron –; or on the method – she pleaded for a time of“appeasement”, while the Head of State repeats that we must continue to reform quickly and strongly.

The “mistakes of Elizabeth”

For his part, the president no longer even bothers to hide his annoyance. In his entourage, where it is repeated that the “Bollard method” – the consultation with the unions and the Les Républicains (LR) party – was a failure, we never tire of listing the “Faults of Elizabeth”.

Within the government itself, the Prime Minister is struggling to impose her authority on the « crocodiles », these heavyweights who covet his place and show themselves to be more and more unruly. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, whom she asked – like the others – to make 5% savings in her ministry, thus curtly dismissed her in a letter – unveiled on May 10 by The chained Duck – in a judged tone ” limit “ by those close to Matignon. For his part, the Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, another suitor, does as he pleases on the military programming law, which arrives before Parliament next week.

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