What if Rachida Dati got rid of Anne Hidalgo?

Philippe Bilger is an honorary magistrate and president of the Institut de la parole. He is also the author of the Mur des Cons (Albin Michel, 2019).

In Paris, a survey puts Rachida Dati in the lead for the first time with 25%, ahead of Anne Hidalgo at 23% and Agnès Buzyn who does barely better than Benjamin Griveaux, whom she has announced that a good part of her project municipal did not suit him.

If things remain as they are, we will have to wonder about the false good idea that the arrival of the ex-minister in this game would have been to replace in catastrophe a candidate forced to abandon him. You cannot say everything and its opposite with impunity, declare yourself attached to your ministry and then leave it under pressure from the president, cry when you hand over to Olivier Véran and say "that we are not afraid of anything" and that we "feel this city 100%" . There is in society, in Paris or elsewhere, a repugnance towards what ostensibly comes from old practices. Where commitments are secondary to opportunities, where tactics prevail over convictions.

This civic detestation, moreover, is not far paradoxically from favoring Rachida Dati whose adversaries serve her more than they harm her. The second round, in any case, will not be fun for her, and bad omens do not predict the slightest chance. We mocked her candidacy as soon as she announced it and therefore we are no longer a surprise or a miracle.

Having never concealed my thought with regard to his ministerial action - shadows and lights composing a landscape which would have deserved better, but remarkable if we refer to Michèle Alliot-Marie who followed her - I am only more at ease to underline that the error would be to forget that Rachida Dati is first of all a formidable candidate, an exceptional fighter whose virtues are increased tenfold when one doubts her and whose hope of victory is stimulated by the grumpy who sadly sow obstacles on his path.

The latter will recognize themselves and will no longer be able to invoke, without a bad conscience, a future where the alliance with LREM would remain the panacea and salvation. Rachida Dati can only feel comforted in her invocation to the rally which should not sadly exclude some of her supporters tempted by an absurd dissent.

While what is happening in Paris shows the correctness of Rachida Dati's analysis: a political force which, before the hour is given up, becomes of an insignificant weakness, while it is reinforced when it proclaims its identity and its capacity to remain faithful to it.

That Rachida Dati is divisive is not an overwhelming appreciation of originality. But if the alternative is left to us only between a lukewarm consensus and a risky but winable battle, the choice is quickly made.

I purposely forget the basics. It is a change of course that this relegation of Anne Hidalgo, who seemed installed in a boom less due to her record than a long time to the mediocre opposition opposite. It was important to refocus on the basic and deplorable "basics" which in the exercise of its mandate should objectively disqualify it: dirt, insecurity and traffic jams. To mention only these serious deficiencies. I am not persuaded that the ideological or demagogic measures which it believes to offer us but which it threatens us will guarantee it a more reassuring electoral future. It would be absurd that a generally vilified mayor be rewarded with a re-election! Certainly there is irony in politics but it should not be abused. Anne Hidalgo is the safest and paradoxical ally of Rachida Dati because of the worst that we rightly overwhelm her.

Nothing is won but Paris can become the first step, in the municipal elections, to make LREM lose a form of arrogance and teach it a modesty which since 2017 it had lost the habit. Certainly still an ancient world but whose masters would have changed.