L'Après-Covid-19... Is Macron really planning to change his PM?

In the week where Boris Johnson has been doggedly holding on to a special advisor who has flagrantly flouted the rules of lockdown in the UK, it seems almost inconceivable that President Emmanuel Macron might even be contemplating thanking his perfectly decent Prime Minister Edouard Philippe for his services and asking him to use the door. Throughout the crisis, which Macron has largely left to Philippe and his ministers to manage, the PM has conducted himself well (not always, but generally) and with his characteristic calm and clarity (for the most part). Macron gave the direction of travel, Philippe and the government filled in the details.

An opinion poll published by L’Obs on 26 May even suggested that Philippe is 11 points ahead of Macron in the charts. Asked, by Odoxa, if they thought Macron was doing a good job of being President, only 35% replied yes (down 7 points), while 46% reckon Philippe is making a good fist of being PM (stable). While the two questions are, up to a point, comparing oranges and apples, therein lies part of the problem. And all of this amongst a growing number of stories in the French press that Macron is preparing for some big changes as France eases out of lockdown. This might involve a new PM and/or a major reshuffle to create a ‘government of national unity’, an early dissolution of the National Assembly, or, some have even suggested, an early resignation to force a new presidential election. While some of this might be a kind of political fantasy football - name your governmental first eleven - it’s worth considering.

I have written at various points in the past in this blog about the relationship in France between president and premier, both in real time and in a more abtract sense. The primacy of one over the other is obvious. The head of state is elected by the people, the prime minister is nominated by him or her and their authority derives from them. (The PM must, however, enjoy the confidence of the National Assembly.) This primacy was only challenged during periods of political cohabitation (1986-88, 1993-95 and 1997-2002), when the mismatch between the presidential term of seven years and the five-year term for the National Assembly could produce a majority of a different political stripe to the head of state. All of that was swept away when both terms and elections came into line in 2002.

In the 62 years since the Fifth Republic was founded, only one of the eight heads of state has made do with one PM for the whole of his term. Nicolas Sarkozy found himself stuck with François Fillon throughout the period 2007 to 2012, though it wasn’t because he didn’t want to change his premier. Rumours regularly circulated that Sarkozy wanted to changer de cap (to change course) and drop the dry and austerity-minded Fillon. Towards the end of his term, and with re-election in 2012 in mind, it seemed that Sarkozy was about to appoint Jean-Louis Borloo, one of those men of the French (centre-)right who is regarded as being social. Bringing Borloo to the Hôtel Matignon would certainly have signalled a shift towards a more social policy ahead of 2012. But it didn’t happen, not least because of concerns over Borloo’s health…

As paradoxical as it might seem, it is toward the beginning of their terms of office that Presidents are less free to choose the PM they want. Once the initial ‘debt’ often linked to this or that appointment is paid off, or as the term of office takes a clearer shape, or another election heaves into view, so there is a freer choice. The situation confronting Macron now is both different and the same.

In the present circumstances, it might seem absurd for Macron to be considering a shake up. Unlike Johnson, Macron only has two years of his term left, but like the British PM, he is in charge of a collapsing economy: une économie à terre . The French President of 2020 can no longer be the President of 2017, and where Macron, Philippe and finance minister Bruno Le Maire have so far pursued a liberal economic policy, now there has to be a turn. Where the Gilets Jaunes and massive opposition to pension reform failed, SARS-CoV-2 has succeeded. The question facing Macron and his advisors is how to manage that turn and with what personnel?

Macron’s team at the Elysée are also trying to second guess who will be his opponents come 2022. Marine Le Pen is a given, but while François Baroin is being touted as the man to lead the bid by Les Républicains (LR) to take back the office they were meant to win in 2017, not everyone is convinced he is up to the task. A former minister, a reasonably efficient mayor of Troyes and chair of the Association des Maires de France, his performance at the head of the republican right’s 2017 general election campaign was, to be kind, indifferent. Personally, I am not sure he wants it badly enough and I am not alone. It’s not enough to be a handsome devil with a film-star wife.

According to Le Monde, Macron’s biggest fear is the emergence of a ‘populist’ candidate from outside of the traditional party structures - whatever those are any more. These include, allegedly, the thoroughly unpleasant far-right essayist and broadcaster Eric Zemmour, or the journalist and La France Insoumise deputy François Ruffin, or… well the list goes on. I don’t buy this, for two reasons.

In the first place, the one candidate who would have the most to lose in the presence of a populist, anti-élite candidate would be Marine Le Pen. She would also be the candidate with the most to lose if, by the way, one or more ‘hard-right’ candidates were to emerge instead of Baroin (Julien Aubert, perhaps).

In the second place, the biggest threat to Macron surely comes from the moderate right, in the shape of a Valérie Pécresse or a Xavier Bertrand… if either of them wants the job. But this is speculation for another time.

If Philippe were to go - and there is no evidence he wants to but that never saved a French PM before - who would replace him? Le Journal du Dimanche would like us to believe it might be Gérald Darmanin. Currently minister of public accounts, Darmanin won the municipal election in Tourcoing, next to Lille, in the first round at the head of an LREM list. He also has a reputation for being more social and thus better suited to ‘the new politics’ than Philippe. Two other names that have circulated, Manuel Valls, Jean-Michel Blanquer, are likely to provoke much too much hostility, while François Bayrou and Richard Ferrand’s copybooks have been blotted by financial affairs. Which leaves…?

Meanwhile, on the back of the shortcomings revealed by the Covid-19 crisis (and indeed before), the government has launched the Ségur de la Santé*, a seven-week consultation of all stakeholders in the French health service, based at the health ministry in the Rue de Ségur. The process is intended to deliver root and branch changes aimed not solely at delivering the dreaded ‘efficiencies’ in the French health system, but also, Macron and Philippe have promised, a massive ‘revalorisation’ of the salaries of lower paid health and care workers, of their status and their wellbeing. Now I’ve typed that, I feel quite worried for them. It sounds like a recipe for micromanaging to the nth degree. It also ressembles Le Grand Débat National. If anyone remembers that. But perhaps Macron is sincere. Perhaps we are about to see le Macron social?

*Back in May 1968, the Pompidou government tried to resolve the striking and rioting of that month by launching a three-way consultation process between government, trades unions and employers at the then Ministry of Social Affairs HQ in the Rue de Grenelle. Since then, these sorts of grandes messes have been referred to as the ‘Grenelle de… l’environnment’, for example. Macron and his health minister Olivier Véran have deliberately tried to both echo that and shift the meaning. ‘Grenelles’ don’t usually end well.