Arnaud Benedetti is an associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne University. He is editor-in-chief of the
Political and Parliamentary Review,
whose annual meeting, the Cité des Débats, is being held from this Friday in Saint-Raphaël.
He published
How did politicians die?
The great malaise of power
(Éditions du Cerf, 2021).
LE FIGARO. - Beyond their content, do the measures announced by Gabriel Attal, in your opinion, form part of a political design? Which ?
Arnaud BENDETTI. -
A communications plan does not make a general policy speech.
Gabriel Attal is an object of communication at the service of a president in great difficulty.
The political goal is twofold: to hold on, while the noose tightens in Parliament with the agricultural crisis and the risk of recession, and it visibly closes on the mantra of “at the same time” and its share of contradictions. .
The other objective for the executive is electoral, the change of prime minister aims to limit the damage in view of the European elections which look bad for the presidential camp, according to the polls.
The Prime Minister focused his speech on the middle classes. Is this a response to the feeling of dispossession that runs through these categories?
Most studies show a progression of the National Rally among the middle classes.
At the heart of it, namely the intermediate professions, the votes in favor of the FN which became RN increased from 13% in 2002 to 40% in 2022. This increase is obviously spectacular and testifies to the capacity of attraction of the the Marinist offer towards this electoral segment, without which we cannot win an election.
All the more so since social mobility, which constitutes the driving force behind the support of these layers for the Republic, is broken down.
All the representations that these French people have of the future of their children are now imbued with a strong feeling of pessimism and an existential observation of downgrading.
Read alsoBruno Retailleau: “With Attal, there will be no break with the Macronist software”
The Prime Minister has developed an opportunist doctrine, based on cash talk and rapid action. Is attalism different from macronism?
There is no attalism;
it is far too early to know if it will ever exist.
For the moment, the speed of communication of the young prime minister, in addressing the conservative electorate, is part of this more general movement of macronism which, confronted with the exercise of power, seems to discover reality such as live the French, far from the half-marketed, half-idealist jumble of the 2017 campaign. This also results from a gradual change in Emmanuel Macron's electorate, which saw a number of voters of French Fillon join him between 2017 and 2022, as evidenced by the results of municipal elections in certain bourgeois municipalities in western Paris in particular.
For the moment, Gabriel Attal is totally dependent on the man he appointed and who remains his principal, institutionally and politically.
He has no other vocation, at present, than to be a “good little soldier”.
Considering the weakness of its majority, its franking margins are non-existent...
The “at the same time” is nothing other than a communicators’ formula, one of the signatures of this “permanent communication stunt”.
Arnaud Benedetti
Reform of State Medical Aid, RSA conditional on 15 hours of activity, desire to “de-medicalize France”, “work of educational interest” for young delinquents… A number of measures seem to be signals sent to the right. But has “at the same time” really given way to a form of conservatism?
The “at the same time” is nothing other than a communicators’ formula, one of the signatures of this “permanent communication stunt” that I described in 2018 in my book where I explained that communication in Macronism was a way of creating support for old policies of adaptation to globalization.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Macronism is an opportunism at all times which, like a commercial object whose content cannot be modified or at the margin, can only be adapted to market trends - here the market of political issues - by modifying its
packaging
.
On economic aspects, it is consistent with its initial line of rather liberal display with the desire to restore labor value.
On the sovereign, with a desire to assert authority and the Republic, he triangulates in semantics.
But this communication is finding it increasingly difficult to conceal the confusion of which it is the product.
The problem with the presidential camp is the heart of trust in politics: sincerity.
The Prime Minister focused part of his speech on “reducing” the “burden of rules and standards” for VSEs and SMEs, and “simplifying” procedures. What do you think of these announcements? Is this not also a way of reconnecting with the initial promise of Macronism?
Many French people are in favor of reducing standards and debureaucratization, that goes without saying.
Let us remember, however, that the Macronie has been in power since 2017 and that in an area like that of agriculture, currently in crisis, it has contributed through the vote of its MEPs to strengthening the normative straitjacket.
So in fact, the words are there, they are repeated and hammered out over and over but it is clear that they are received with a form of skepticism by those to whom they are primarily addressed.
The best example is none other than that of the peasants for whom communication is not enough.
They have the impression of a gap between communication, a technique aimed at controlling opinions as much as possible, and politics which must be the capacity to produce public actions likely to meet the needs of a society.
When the first is too present and “overactive”, the second is very often the cause of a form of helplessness.