One week is the time it took Emmanuel Macron to again sow trouble over his relationship with Edouard Philippe. Tuesday, April 28 in the Council of Ministers, the head of state had yet made a point to deny any tension with that of the government. How to set the record straight, when several press articles had reported telephone calls he had made to journalists, to express his disagreement with Philippe's decision to keep the presentation of the plan on the same day of release from containment and the vote of deputies.
But yesterday, it was a short sentence slipped from his television interview from a classroom in Poissy (Yvelines) who came to deliver a play in the jukebox. When asked if he is afraid of the “economic collapse” of the country, a formula used last week by the Prime Minister, the president replied quietly: “No, I don't have those big words. "
Bad soap opera
A semantic distancing which has left more than one perplexed in the majority. "We are off again for the dirty soap opera, so we will never end! Annoys a parliamentarian, who notes that the day before, Macron had already "sealed" the media reach of Philippe's speech in the Senate, by intervening immediately after him live from the Elysée Palace.
Neither one nor two, the opposition also rushed into the breach yesterday afternoon. To start with Christian Jacob, the boss of the Republicans, who since the hemicycle mocked the situation: "In your discharge the President of the Republic does not help you. On the contrary, by taking positions that are at least evolutionary, it weakens you with each of its interventions. "
Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, like rue de Varenne, we keep hammering that "there isn't a sheet of cigarette paper" between the two men. "His sentence on the collapse is not a way to reframe the Prime Minister. The President has great consideration and respect for his work. There is no relationship problem, neither political, nor functional, ”swears an Elysée adviser, a little annoyed by the new controversy. Same mood on the side of Matignon, where we speak of "history where there is none".
Philippe, an “unboltable” “wracked by the crisis”
"Everyone explains that they are fine, but the tensions are still palpable and those around them are getting out of it," said a heavyweight from the government. While a close friend of the president worries about the popularity of Philippe in the polls. In the last Ifop barometer for “Paris Match”, Macron lost 6 points, Philippe gained 3 and passed his N + 1 in the hearts of the French…
This is what makes him a personality "unboltable in the sequence", especially in the event of reshuffle. "The president would have the wrong role because Edouard would pass for a martyr, he who has always been loyal and a foolproof servitude", decrypts an elected representative of En Marche.
Except that, in the perspective of the “next world” and the need to “reinvent itself”, is Philippe still in the political equation of Emmanuel Macron if the latter had to decide to put his famous “into practice” that it costs ”? “This is of course the question we ask ourselves, we are at the end of the cycle. It is still well wrung out by the crisis, and it had the arm wrestling on pensions before ”, translates a parliamentarian who has Macron's ear.
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"Result, it is a delicate situation for the president and, paradoxically, it is the Prime Minister who holds the key, bounces a member of the first macronist circle. Does he want to reinvent himself with us? Nobody knows. It can just as well send signals to be able to leave and go to Le Havre after the municipal elections. We will be fixed in the coming weeks. "