At long last, no longer the bridesmaid … maybe
After the now customary tergiversation, Emmanuel Macron has made his choice: François Bayrou. Bayrou, until now always the bridesmaid but never the bride, hadn’t been able to cash on his sacrifice to the cause of Emmanuel Macron: 2017 wasn’t that long ago, but many have forgotten that Bayrou’s endorsement of Macron (and renunciation of his own possible candidacy) gave Macron an important boost in his presidential bid.
Those who can remember all the way back to 2007 will recall that in that year Bayrou showed himself to be less decisive: after the first round of the presidential, in which he finished third (nearly doubling Jean-Marie Le Pen’s score at the low ebb of the Front National, before its fortunes were revived by Marine Le Pen’s “de-demonization”), he might have thrown his support to Ségolène Royal but at the last minute couldn’t quite bring himself to go through with it–not even in exchange for the prime ministership. It was said that he was sitting in his car in the street below her apartment when he decided to back out of the tentative deal.
The only thing that is clear at this point is that he’ll be facing decisions more difficult than that of whether to throw in his lot with Ségolène. In order to win the support of the Socialists, which he needs to avoid an immediate censure vote, he will probably need to break with Macron on, among other things, raising taxes on the wealthy, pension reform, and immigration. Perhaps this was the reason for Macron’s hesitation, and for the reported tension in his two-hour meeting with the new PM. We shall see.
Bayrou is just ornery enough to relish the idea of a clash with the president, with whom he has clashed before. He is a sort of austerian by instinct, which makes him well suited to this moment of budgetary crisis, but he lacks the natural deference to wealth, influence, and pedigree of the ambitious younger men to his right: Attal, Philippe, Darmanin, Wauquiez. This could make for interesting drama, with the centrist PM having to rely more on the PS than on the right, and mounting tension on the right and with the Elysée as parts of the presidential reform agenda are scrapped in a scramble to reduce the budget deficit. But of course Bayrou is even more dependent on the sufferance of the right than on the reluctant support of the left, so we could soon find ourselves back in the same impasse that led to Barnier’s ouster.
But the first order of business is to secure the support of the PS, which finds itself in a surprising position of influence for the first time in many years. Will Olivier Faure summon up the gumption to back a centrist and incur the wrath of Jean-Luc Mélenchon? With an impending challenge from the right wing of his own party at the upcoming convention, Faure may find this an expedient moment to discover his inner centrist in the name of national salvation. If one has to make a pact with the devil, it’s probably better to pick a relatively mild one like Bayrou rather than a wild one like Mélenchon or a cunning one like Wauquiez.
Bayrou has one important trump card: he is 73 and probably too old to run for president in 2027. He can therefore afford to stand on principle rather than twist himself into a pretzel in the service of his further ambition.
Look forward to an interesting weekend as Bayrou names his ministers.
P.S. Bayrou as PM raises an interesting question with regard to Le Pen. He, too, was charged with misusing European Parliamentary assistants but escaped any sanction. Le Pen now faces a possible 5 years of ineligibility for the same offense. Just sayin’ …
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Indeed, Bayrou needs to form a government and that will be no easy task, not least because of Retailleau.
The real challenge is the budget where conditions are rapidly worsening . The so-called spontaneous forecast for 2025 is looking like 7% deficit, which may still be an underestimate. While a stop gap special law is passed in the coming days which will allow government to keep functioning on the basis of the 2024 budget (but issues will be piling up after just a few weeks), Bayrou will need to quickly draft a 2025 budget law after forming a government and to present it to parliament which will then have to examine it and, quite possibly and likely, amend it prior to deciding to approve it or not. We are talking a number of months here.
One obvious reason for Barnier’s failure was that he was forced by the 2013 LOLF (the Organic Law Governing Finance Laws) to draft a budget in two weeks (!!!), which was obviously only going to end in catastrophe – he knew it. Bayrou maybe, maybe will be able to muster an ,extra two weeks compared to Barnier, but that is still insufficient for serious work on matters that happen to be horribly complicated this time round, and I suppose that I don’t need to mention that the Christmas and New Year holidays are sacred also at the Ministry of Finance. So one expects that there will be many grounds (legitimate and not) for amendments and mischief.
Now this thing about Barnier having been at the mercy of the Rassemblement National while Bayrou would not be: wait and see, you may end up crying. Bayrou had a very interesting supportive reaction during Le Pen’s trial and now Le Pen has a very mild reaction to Bayrou. But if and when Le Pen gets condemned all bets are off. Just sayin’ indeed.
My sense is that Bayrou will have “Premier Ministre de La France” on his tombstone, and that today was the apogée of his career. The Left of La France Insoumise is determined to force Macron to resign and to grab more power for the legislature under the guise of having won the legislative elections. True revolutionaries, their position has not shifted —no compromise, ever.
While Marine Le Pen and La Rassmblement Nationale will tread carefully around Bayrou initially, so long as there’s a chance that Le Pen will not be banned from politics for five years as the prosecutor wants, she will hold her fire only long enough to deliver a knock-out blow to Bayrou. Anyway, even if she is banned from political activity long past the 2027 election, Jordan Bardella is ready to pick up the mantle for the RN.
—And watch Laurent Wauquiez seek to grab her voters, dismissing Bardella as “wet behind the ears”.
In the meantime, Macron will be the last man standing —battered, hated, alone, arrogant to the end.
Meanwhile, the French will shake their heads and ask how it happened that those they elected have traveled so far from the people they said they were running to help.