Emmanuel Macron wants to try again. By tapping François Bayrou as prime minister on Friday, France’s president hopes to retain power via a shaky governing coalition between the Macronists and the center-right Républicains. And as with the outgoing premier Michel Barnier (of Les Républicains), whose government was toppled in a December 4 no-confidence vote, Bayrou’s nomination has the president leaning once more on an older generation of the political establishment.
Arguably, the seventy-three-year-old Bayrou was the original Macron, running for the presidency in 2002, 2007, and 2012 as leader of a centrist formation in competition with mainline conservatives. Since Macron’s election in 2017, Bayrou’s Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem) party has been an important ally — a relationship that has not been without its frictions. Minutes before the nomination was made official at around noon on Friday, the headline story was that Bayrou would not be selected as premier, the subject of purportedly tense exchanges that same morning between the pair.
What information emerges of Friday morning’s arm-twisting between the president and his new premier will surely provide interesting detail on the crisis gripping the president’s camp. Macron is characteristically determined to keep his hand on the political situation, despite the defeat suffered by his coalition in this summer’s snap parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, Macron’s eroding authority has freed longtime allies to jockey more aggressively for places and positions as an internal succession fight picks up speed.
Publicly, Bayrou is presenting himself as a stable hand. At the Friday evening transfer of power with Barnier, Bayrou promised to work toward a “necessary…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
