POLITICS
Contenders start to jostle over Macron's
succession
With President Emmanuel Macron leaving office in 2027,
the race to appear as his natural successor has already started among his
allies and ministers.
By Claire
Gatinois
Published
on April 27, 2022 at 21h03, updated at 21h03 on April 27, 2022
At the end
of 2003 – a time when the left and the right still existed – the Socialist Laurent
Fabius and the representative of a hardline right Nicolas Sarkozy were making
themselves heard. A little more than a year after the re-election of Jacques
Chirac, neither of them were hiding their ambitions. "I sometimes think
about [the Elysée Palace] while shaving," said Mr. Fabius, a former prime
minister under François Mitterrand, in October 2003. "I think about it,
and not just while shaving," replied Mr. Sarkozy, then the interior
minister, a month later.
Former
prime minister Edouard Philippe does not shave his white beard every day. But
he still thinks about it. A lot. Often. In the wake of Emmanuel Macron's
re-election, he released the first edition of the magazine Horizons 2022, on
Monday 25 April, named after the party he created last October. It is one of
the first steps in his strategy toward the 2027 presidential election. Based on
the think tank model, this magazine should enable the politician from Le Havre
to put forward his ideas. And sooner or later, his political manifesto.
"Edouard
Philippe sees far ahead, it's no mystery," said a member of his entourage.
But he is not the only one to fancy a presidential destiny. And Mr. Macron is
aware of this. His second term will be his last. And while the president
intends to calm down ambitions in order to govern in peace, those who hope to
take over from him are already working out their tactics.
Bruno Le
Maire has known failure
Finance Minister
Bruno Le Maire, who worked hard for five years in his ministry, believes that
the president's success is closely linked to the growth of gross domestic
product (GDP). He undoubtedly sees himself as a legitimate successor. Hoping to
be reappointed, he knows that he is popular after implementing his
"whatever it takes" approach during the Covid-19 crisis.
"After
the lockdown," he wrote in his book L'Ange et la Bête ("The Angel and
the Beast"), "during my vacations on the Basque coast (...) employees
and business owners would come up to me and check who I was, staring at me with
a suspicious look that seemed to say: 'Is it really him?' (...) Then,
encouraged by my silence, they told me: 'Thank you for what you did'."
A
heavyweight in the current government, he believes in his chances. He has the
experience, the stature, the skills, and the ideas that he exposes in his
books, in which he mixes personal confessions and strategic programs.
Above all,
he has experienced failure. He fell when he was defeated in the Les
Républicains (LR) primary in 2016, and has learned that the French love those
who have succeeded after difficult setbacks. And to distinguish himself between
now and 2027, the former MP plans not to be a distraction from the current
president. Or not right away. But in sports as in politics, "the foot you
jump with is the one that makes a leap beautiful," said a government
source. With that in mind, Mr. Le Maire's clumsiness – when he failed to rule
out bypassing Parliament for the pension reform, for example – could harm him.
Mr. Le
Maire will find it all the more complicated as the minister is not the only
figure now flaunting the weight of experience that forges statesmen.
François
Bayrou, the president of the centrist party MoDem, is another. Aged 70 and the
veteran of four presidential runs – the last of which, in 2017, was stopped
early in order to back Emmanuel Macron – is not throwing in the towel.
"There are two jobs that cannot be given up on: being a father and being a
citizen," he said. To put it more clearly, Mr. Bayrou is not totally
ruling out a bid for the 2027 presidential election. Is it this shared ambition
that unites the mayors of Pau and Le Havre? While often at odds in the past,
they have been seen with each other even laughing out loud, someone from their
entourage said. Mr. Bayrou has even given Mr. Philippe a wise old man's piece
of advice: "In politics, timing mistakes are more serious than grammatical
mistakes."
'Loyal but
free'
To be sure,
Mr. Philippe appears pressed for time. The creation, last October, of his party
Horizons, a springboard supposed to propel him to the Elysée in 2027, may have
seemed premature. The re-election of Mr. Macron was then far from played out.
Today, the man who claims to be "loyal but free" with respect to the
president does not hide his ambitions. More popular than the president, he
enjoys strong support, particularly from ex-Les Républicains (LR) mayors such
as Christian Estrosi (Nice) or Hubert Falco (Toulon). "In politics, there
are the big cats and there is the zoo. Edouard Philippe belongs to the first
category," said former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin who, like Mr.
Bayrou, urged him not to rush.
But can Mr.
Philippe wait? In order to have an impact during this five-year term, he will
have to fight a first round in the legislative elections. To show his loyalty,
he intends to launch Horizons candidacies under the same banner as the
presidential majority. But, being a "free" man, he does not intend to
merge his party into Emmanuel Macron's, as the president proposes.
Mr.
Philippe wants to make his voice heard, and to take part in the debates within
the majority in order to revive a right wing capable of replacing LR. "In
public debate, people need to be able to situate themselves, and in the
Assemblée Nationale, unless we go back to the [revolutionary] Montagnards and
the Girondins, there will always be a left and a right. So I believe that all
those who say that the left or the right no longer exist are mistaken," he
wrote in his magazine Horizons 2022. "To have an impact, you have to
think," agreed Alain Chrétien, the mayor of Vesoul and a supporter of Mr.
Philippe.
But to have
an impact, one also needs funding. To get it, Horizons will have to win enough
constituencies to form a group in the Assemblée Nationale. However, the Macron
contingent does not seem ready to give him all the space he hopes for. The lack
of enthusiasm that the mayor of Le Havre is said to have shown during the
presidential campaign combined with the comfortable score obtained by Emmanuel
Macron does not place the Mr. Philippe in a strong position. "If the story
that Edouard Philippe is selling us is expansion, then let him expand the
majority. Let him go and get the constituencies we don't have," said a
long-time supporter of Mr. Macron.
Without a
group in the Palais-Bourbon, Edouard Philippe's dreams could be compromised.
Unless Horizons goes on the offensive. On Tuesday, April 26, tempers were
already flaring because a discussion between the various partners inside the
majority had not yet taken place. Gilles Boyer, an MEP close to Edouard
Philippe, warned: "We will not commit to an agreement that was made
without us." War has not yet been declared, but it is looming.
Claire Gatinois
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