If the head of government comes out very damaged from the pension reform sequence, she nevertheless has assets up her sleeve to allow her to stay at Matignon. Starting with his profile which does not overshadow the President and the lack of potential replacements.
Figures that have enough to make you grimace. One year to the day after the arrival of Elisabeth Borne at Matignon, more than 6 out of 10 French people want her to leave according to an Odoxa-Blackbone poll for the Figaro. If the Prime Minister is not the first of the heads of government to suffer from a very strong unpopularity, she is the least popular since the arrival of Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée in 2017.
The tenant of Matignon thus collects 30% of favorable opinions according to Ifop figures for Paris Match. After 12 months at the head of the government marked by the Covid-19 crisis, Jean Castex was at 48% popularity according to the same barometer. As for Édouard Philippe, after a year on rue de Varenne, the fifty-year-old garnered 44% popularity, according to weekly figures.
“She does the job”
If the Prime Minister pays both the content of the pension reform which remains massively rejected by the French and its adoption by 49.3, far from the “new method” based on “compromises” that she hoped for, some observers judge the situation much more favorable than it seems.
“The President wants collaborating Prime Ministers who run the shop, who administer the country and who do not overshadow him. She is doing the job for which she was recruited”, explains Isabelle Veyrat-Masson, director of the Communication laboratory and CNRS policy, interviewed by BFMTV.com.
Politically weakened, the enarque has however taken care in recent days to show his desire to remain at the head of the government. “I am ready to continue”, launched Élisabeth Borne at the microphone of BFMTV during her trip to Reunion, saying to herself “100% at her task”.
But what happens next for particularly unpopular Prime Ministers may worry him. In December 2013, when Jean-Marc Ayrault – then head of the government of François Hollande – unscrewed, reaching a confidence rating of 18% according to a TNS-Sofres surveythe socialist touches almost the bottom of the polls.
“Appreciated by the majority”
Edith Cresson thus collected 22% of favorable opinion in 1992 when François Mitterrand decided to part with it, after only ten months in office, in a particularly complicated political context. Jean-Marc Ayrault finally leaves Matignon four months later, damaged by an economic policy far from unanimous among the socialists and rising unemployment figures.
“The whole question is that of political balance. Jean-Marc Ayrault did not have the support of the entire left. If Élisabeth Borne continues to be appreciated by the majority and Macronist sympathizers, she keeps her chances”, decrypts Frédéric Saint- Clair, the former press adviser to former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Last chance for Elisabeth Borne: that of the lack of alternative candidates. When Emmanuel Macron was looking for his future head of government, he had listed his composite portrait. It will be someone who is “attached to the social question, the environmental question and the productive question”, had launched the President on a visit to a market in Cergy (Val d’Oise).
“A sparse sideline”
If the future Prime Minister seemed to tick the boxes, the other names circulating at the time did not all correspond to the road map drawn. From Julien Denormandie, former Minister of Agriculture, who had no expertise on social issues and had shocked with an exit on the homeless, to the President of the ECB Christine Lagarde via Richard Ferrand, who has since lost the legislative.
The Catherine Vautrin hypothesis had been very seriously considered, before the Élysée backtracked. Part of the majority had vetoed it, recalling the opposition to marriage for all of President LR of Grand Reims.
“Macronie’s bench is relatively sparse at the moment. A techno profile without presidential ambition and ready to take blows for the President, all in an inextricable political situation… It’s a bit l ‘rare bird and it may be his luck,’ remarks the communicator Émilie Zapalski.
Even better for her: Elisabeth Borne does not arouse rejection by the right whose votes are crucial in the Assembly in a context of relative majority. The profiles of ministers Bruno Le Maire and Gérald Darmanin, both from the Republicans before finally joining the macronie and regularly cited as potential replacements, are much more divisive.
Something to give the Prime Minister a little more air. Monday evening on TF1, Emmanuel Macron said he was “proud” of the work of his head of government, and could well extend his confidence in him after the milestone of July 14, which he set after his speech last April.
