Chloé Morin was the former Prime Minister's opinion advisor from 2012 to 2017. She currently works as an associate expert at the Jean Jaurès Foundation.
For more than a week, French deconfinement has been taking place gradually. Without a major hitch, at least at this point. And, slowly but surely, politics is also fading.
Since mid-March, the debates had certainly not stopped - it is moreover normal that democracy should not be put on hold - but those in charge on all sides had shown relative restraint. With the exception of Marine Le Pen, who very early preempted the niche of frontal challenge so as not to be robbed of the monopoly of the main alternative to Macron. The others, both local and national elected officials, tried above all to alert and propose, in a relatively constructive spirit.
Everyone knew that French people terrified by the health danger as well as by the prospect of an unprecedented social crisis would not support that elected officials seem to ostensibly exploit the flaws and weaknesses - however gaping, when it comes to masks - to draw the cover to them.
For two months, the ambitions were put away. Or at least, they advanced masked.
But little by little, as we emerge from the health emergency and the emergence of essential strategic choices to build the society of the “after”, politics is regaining its rights. Ambitions are awakening, all the more since the executive does not emerge strengthened from this crisis.
The executive already promises an "act III" of the quinquennium (act II never started, but let's move on), the ecologists call an ecological turning point, the left a social turning point, the sovereignists see their theses validated, and the liberals call to unlock the 35 hours and free up work ...
And behind the political options and the debates that are taking shape, there is obviously the question of the incarnation, with a line of sight - already! - the presidential election of 2022. Because if a man or a woman can win a country without a party, as Macron did in 2017, it is not possible at the time of hyper-personalization for a party to take power without a personality to embody it.
The crisis having marked the triumph of communities over the state, and proximity over bureaucracy, it is not surprising that most of the ambitions that appear - always more or less concealed - are those of executive bosses local. On the right, in particular, at least three serious figures come forward - Xavier Bertrand, Valérie Pécresse and François Baroin -, exits reinforced by the crisis by an effective and humble management of the crisis, and to which the commentators lend presidential ambitions. At least three, even four, because it is difficult to imagine that a political animal like Laurent Wauquiez could have given up on any idea of return, if however the opportunity presented itself. A low profile Wauquiez, who we do not see in the "national" media, but who struggled during confinement to fill the gaps in failed public action and pose as protector of the inhabitants of his region .
Pécresse was very present in the media during the crisis, especially on thorny and scary questions for the opinion of transport and the return to school, but always in a pragmatic and not polemical spirit. At 43% of good opinions in the latest Ifop barometer for Paris Match , it is on the same level as François Baroin, and seems to want to embody more or less the same political line, firm on the sovereign, protective in social matters, but also liberal in economic matters (an ambiguity which they share, and which they will one day have to overcome…). But although having chosen very different communication strategies during the crisis, one very present (to display the humility of the one who "does"), the other very absent (to signal, but hollow, the same humility of the one who does instead of saying), they do not really score points (-2 for Pécresse in a month, -3 for Baroin).
And this Sunday, it is undoubtedly Xavier Bertrand - also appearing "at work", without polemical spirit, during the duration of the crisis - who will have taken, in the race launched on the right, a little step ahead . The best placed competitor on the right in opinion - 46% of positive opinions in Ifop / Match -, if we exclude any possibility of seeing Bruno Le Maire (48%) or Édouard Philippe (57%) one day Emmanuel Macron, indeed inflicted on the president a snub whose symbolism finds an important echo in public opinion. By wearing a mask despite the Elysian instructions, he seemed to remind his Emmanuel Macron of his duty of exemplarity and the reality of the threat too quick to want to embody the aftermath and optimism to take off from the catastrophic management of the crisis - and in particular masks ... - in which his government was stuck. By reminding the President that he must be proud of the French and their courage during the crisis, he seemed to accuse the President of pulling the blanket while the victories belong to the soldiers and not to those who guide them. There is no doubt that this postcard will have resonated in public opinion. But we are only at the observation round, and the race for leadership on the right for 2022 has only just begun.
