“We simply wanted an answer to this question: how will 2023 be? Here is the Minister of the Economy, Finance, Industrial and Digital Sovereignty.” Under the applause of an audience of thirty-somethings, Bruno Le Maire enters the set of the show Daily, this Monday, January 2 in the evening. The exceptional guest, “common thread” of this first issue of the year, shakes hands with Yann Barthès before settling down for a good hour on the air. Among the two million viewers of the talk show is a government colleague who, seeing the scene on the screen of his ministerial office, must pinch himself to believe it. “Without messing around, I fell out of my chair… Frankly, what Bruno did was disgusting…”, he blurted out, bitterly, a few days later.
The reason for his bitterness is less to be found in the content of the interview with the super-boss of Bercy than in the timing chosen, which according to him constitutes an unnamed provocation. And for good reason, on the eve of Christmas Eve, December 23 at 4:10 p.m., all members of the executive received a message that could not be clearer from the cabinet of Elisabeth Borne: “For your information, the Prime Minister will be in the morning on January 3. We therefore ask you to plan your back-to-school media from January 4. And Happy New Year’s Eve! Only, in the meantime, Bruno Le Maire seems to have offered himself a small gift at the foot of the tree: the freedom to burn politeness to his superior, with whom relations were at least lukewarm throughout the first five-year term.
At Matignon, we demine by pleading a form of common sense mixed with greatness of soul: the passage of Le Maire had been stalled for a long time, before this ban. And even though he chained Daily and France Inter in quick succession like a certain Elisabeth Borne during the start of the school year in September, managerial intelligence calls for the powerful Minister of the Economy not to be asked to deprogram urgently. But the episode leaves within the government a slight feeling of unequal treatment: “What do you want, Bruno has acquired a special status”, philosophizes a minister, when a second concedes that “there are some who can taking more liberties than others, that’s how it is”. “Bruno may also be number 2 in the government…, we slip with a touch of irony in the entourage of Le Maire. There is the general rule, and then we see what we done with special cases. There is no subject, especially since he made no announcement before the Prime Minister. One more chance.
No one, on the other hand, despite the differences in assessment, dares to underestimate the weight taken in the system by the Minister of the Economy, strong in his capacity for work, his six years of managing the safe of the country than his shop on the banks of the Seine and establish his authority there. According to one of his delegate ministers, “he made us understand that for everything to go well with him, it’s better not to hide things from him and make him sweat” – for reasons of decorum, the last phrase was watered down. The Mayor is a rock, an indestructible. For all of his comrades, this is indisputable and undisputed. How could it be otherwise? The latest opinion polls (Elabe for “Les Echos”“, or “Odoxa for Le Figaro“) place him at the head of the members of the government best known to the French and the most appreciated. It is enough to leave, barely a few seconds, the troops of Édouard Philippe to pour themselves out to understand that he constitutes, in their eyes, a threat to the presidential ambitions of the ex-tenant of Matignon.
“BLM” knows it full well, the relative weakness of a large part of the executive gives it a totem of immunity allowing it to play subtly with the limits while installing, drop by drop, its own reading grid. Some would say a sketch of an ideological spine for, who knows, later. In four years, by any chance.
The face of the State which distributes checks during the Covid crisis now firmly advocates the end of “whatever the cost” at each of its numerous media appearances when, in the face of the tensions which cross the country, the Head of State wants to smooth things over with the French. “Everything that has been done here has been decided upstream by the President and the Prime Minister”, we would like to emphasize in his team, who abhors the disloyalty trials brought against the owner. Still, Emmanuel Macron was clearly targeting him when he backfired against the malfunctions of toll-free numbers during his wishes to bakers on January 5.
In the Elysian entourage, no one makes a mystery of this “fed up” voluntarily staged. In the corridors of Bercy, it is explained that, unfortunately, the president had to hasten to type 2 instead of 3 – “to be informed about the energy aid to which I am entitled” – in the voicemail menu and s is found, at the other end of the handset, in front of an agent who did not know the subject of companies very well… The fault is bad luck. Anyway, Bruno Le Maire did not have to look good: at that moment, he was in Bercy, which he had “filled to bursting”, we whisper in macronie with a big smile mischievous, for its own wishes to economic actors.
The first half of 2023, regardless of the examination of the pension reform, the protest movements or a hypothetical rain of locusts, will be Lemairist, or it will not be. Contested last fall, especially internally, for his stiffness about the taxation of super-dividends, the Minister of the Economy will host a major convention in February on the sharing of value in the company within Renaissance , of which he directs the “Ideas” division. At the beginning of January, the boss of Bercy also announced that he was working on a bill for green reindustrialization, supposed to be examined next spring. “Bruno’s desire to reindustrialize the country is not new, says one of his relatives. Already in 2018, he was in favor of lowering production taxes. And he weighed in on the presidential program so that we will continue on this path.” The icing on the cake, more or less at the same time, Gérald Darmanin, his potential competitor to the succession of Emmanuel Macron, will be in a delicate position to have his text on Immigration adopted. “We will be in the middle of the battle Le Maire – Darmanin, deciphers a pillar of the Renaissance group in the Assembly. Gérald knows very well that immigration, like security, is seen as a weakness in our balance sheet and that he does not have no right to crash.”
Bruno Le Maire accelerates. Bruno Le Maire affirms his principles. A slight, perceptible gap is beginning to emerge between the President of the Republic and the experienced No. 2 of the government who, quietly, has everything to gain by showing consistency in his political line. A Minister of the Economy who takes up space, a lot of space, but too precious to be really worried about, does that remind you of anything? A faithful macronist, former ministerial adviser to Bercy, is amused by the situation. She strangely reminds him of someone… “You know, I know an animal who, in his time, did exactly the same thing as Bruno, in the same place, from the same office. And this animal, his name was Emmanuel Macron. “
