"Not hard enough", "softer than we can be".
This formula, used by Gérald Darmanin during his face-to-face with the boss of the RN Thursday evening on France 2, makes part of the majority cough.
"Not terrible", agrees an LREM deputy, yet in support of the minister against a Marine Le Pen who, according to him, "hid his intentions".
"The questioning among the deputies is to say: if the line is to be more to the right than Marine Le Pen, then there is a subject ...", engages another.
On Europe 1 Friday morning, Gabriel Attal has also distanced himself.
Asked to react on the expression "a little soft", the government spokesman has put Marine Le Pen where he thinks she should be.
“Maybe that's what she's looking for, but she's lying.
It is fuzzy and that is what makes it particularly dangerous for our country.
"
Others are even more severe: "Darmanin has normalized Le Pen, he was not even able to show that it drew its fuel from radical Islamism", torpedoed an LREM deputy.
Co-founder of the party En commun, left wing of LREM, Hugues Renson, notes that "we must know how to show the great differences that we will always have with the extreme right, rather than dancing a kind of pas de deux which we would only retain hypothetical convergences ”.
Atmosphere ...
A congratulatory message from Emmanuel Macron
On the side of Place Beauvau, however, we do not regret anything.
“Gérald Darmanin has above all shown that she is not serious.
By refusing to support the separatism bill, which includes strong and necessary measures to fight radical Islam, it is showing a lack of seriousness, of credibility and therefore, it is true, of undeniable softness.
He therefore assumes perfectly, ”defends the entourage of the minister, who also received a message of congratulations from Emmanuel Macron at the end of the program.
Within the government, some also applaud a shot of three-cushion billiards, without denying the point of cynicism: “It is useful to those on the extreme right, like Marion Maréchal and Eric Zemmour, no longer find it hard enough.
It destabilizes it internally, ”blows a minister.
A government adviser adds: “Attal speaks to Macron's left-wing voters.
But Darmanin, he is there to talk to his right-wing voters, who are still more numerous and who are, above all, the key to his re-election.
"
Again, not everyone sees it that way in Macronie, especially those who want to send signals to the left.
"Darmanin could have valued other scorers," sighs a Walker, thinking of the equal opportunities announcements that were to score this week.
“After the crisis, we will find a fragile, damaged, precarious society.
This is what will threaten the cohesion of the country, "insists Renson, one of the fifteen LREM deputies calling for a" more massive effort "on the social side.
Overtaking or tugging ... A strategist LR, is anyway perplexed on this strategy visibly validated by the Elysee: "He commits a huge political error by making it go through softer than him.
It's even catastrophic when your boss bases his re-election on an anti-Marine Le Pen front… ”