The re-election of Emmanuel Macron on April 24 was immediately followed by numerous speculations as to a government reshuffle taking into account the recomposition of the political landscape at work.
As early as 2016, Emmanuel Macron’s political offer had pivoted on the disqualification of parties deemed outdated and on overcoming the left-right divide. The scenario of the 2022 presidential campaign which is ending will have shown to what degree our political life dangerously continues to fracture. The incorporation into the presidential majority, driven by Emmanuel Macron, of the vast nebula ranging from the center left to part of the Les Républicains (LR) party, now faces the entrenchment of a radical and two-headed challenge, that of the Rassemblement national (RN) which obtained 41.46% of the vote, and that of La France Insoumise, 22% in the first round, carried in particular by an important vote of the youngest.
As the legislative elections of June 2022 become the fateful deadline of the five-year term which opens, the staffs are getting organized. It is in this context that the singular question of the status of Édouard Philippe, former Prime Minister insolently popular.
He had founded his own party, Horizons on October 9th. Four days after Emmanuel Macron’s qualification for the second round, he welcomedthe president-candidate in Le Havre, a visit which concluded an important political journey: Pau (fiefdom of François Bayrou) on March 17 and Special (centre-Finistère, stronghold of Richard Ferrand) on April 5.
What architecture to revitalize the next presidential majority?
Bayrou-Ferrand-Philippe: three essential pillars for Emmanuel Macron’s second term but which also rejected the idea of a single party imagined by the candidate president.
In this context, how can the mayor of Le Havre manage his contortions between, on the one hand, his loyalty to Emmanuel Macron and, on the other, his legitimate personal political projection towards the future?
As head of a “presidentialized” parliamentary majority like never before, Edouard Philippe will have implemented the program of the candidate Macron for more than three years, although coming from a political family officially competing with his (Les Républicains) during the two elections of 2017.
The partition of the Ve Republic, in its articulation between the articles 8 et 49had been played in a daring way from June 18, 2017: the large LREM majority in the legislative elections had not led to the appointment of one of its own at Matignon in favor of Philippe then Jean Castex, also from from LR.
Macron-Philippe, an unresolved conflict of legitimacy
The unexpected problem, for the president, is that this institutional creativity has finally spawned a new avatar of the inverted popularity gap between the Élysée and Matignon. The narrative potential of this phenomenon has always been strong, but this time the challenge is potentially daunting for Emmanuel Macron, whose personal image has deteriorated. Have we ever heard the accusation of arrogance or “Prime Minister of the rich” against Edouard Philippe noted Mathieu Lindon in Liberation in April 2021 ? Non.
Although successively an inflexible promoter of the reform of the SNCF, the increase in the carbon tax and the reform of pensions, he even left Matignon very popular in 2020 while he was almost unknown when he entered it on May 15, 2017. Moreover, he persists in sitting in first place this month, and by far, in the list of favorite political personalities of the French. A crime of lèse-majesté, or “lèse-Jupiter”?
At the very least, a conflict of legitimacy is not settled between the two men. Until now, Edouard Philippe manages to balance the traces of it by his style, which provides him positively in terms of personal image. However, this performance can be weakened by two factors: its institutional vulnerability and its difficulty in assuming its political ambitions.
Weighting, leitmotif of an acclaimed “Philippe style”
Le power is always a matter of style, especially in our presidential regime. It is therefore necessary first of all to linger over a very personal disposition that the man has deployed up to now in his communication and which outlines a style that distinguishes him: the weighting. Close to the more philosophical-sounding virtue of moderation, it is given here as a constant quest for coherence supposed to allow the mayor of Le Havre to manage heavy paradoxes. In reality, the ideal of civility to which Edouard Philippe claims (ethical pillar of weighting) carries a certain vision of politics itself (its institutional translation), which is very present in his work Clear prints and lines. In the end, it is a kind of “radical weighting” that takes shape in a communication whose challenge consists, for the man, in resolving a growing tension between the Macronian dynamic which propelled him in 2017 and his new intentions. personal. So far this weighting has been deciphered mainly in the oratorical art of the character. It is undoubtedly for a lot in the success of its image.
Christophe Petit Tesson/AFP
The weighting of Edouard Philippe was thus translated in the production of a verb consisting permanently in stemming the representations of a tension with the president. At least three main types of oratorical techniques can be identified, which consist for him of retaining his words and therefore his blows. First of all, he is fond of figures of speech that attenuate his thought. His recourses to understatement are innumerable. For example, on April 5, 2021, when asked about the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, he declared to Marion Mourgue and Mathilde Siraud at Le Figaro, “I am not one of those who wish it to fail”. Or when he mentions his own goals : “When you want to serve your country, it is not useless to prepare yourself intellectually, politically”.
Finally, when Horizons was launched, about retirement age) : « […] a question which does not seem out of proportion to settle”.
This process gives it an expressiveness tinged with irony where the boundary between phlegm and stiffness is sometimes tenuous.
Hold back his words and his blows
In a more political logic, Edouard Philippe also invests in rhetorical strategies of distancing events, which places him above the fray. Three refutive arguments are then at work. First a refutation of political games:
“We need women and men who engage calmly, who don’t vibrate every time a sentence is spoken. (Launch of Horizons, Le Havre, October 9)
Then a refutation of dogmatisms : “It is certain that we respect each other, that we esteem each other and we think that by working together, we do things a little better” (with Anne Hidalgo on the subject of the Seine axis).
Finally, it may be a question of qualifying one’s emotions. Its weighting then aims for an exemplarity that prohibits any negative expressiveness, such as resentment. For example in replying to Laurent Delahousse April 4, 2021, with a smile, on the reasons for his dismissal from Matignon: “I have an idea. I keep it to myself”.
Edouard Philippe refines his stature as a statesman. His balance nourishes a repertoire featuring both rectitude and competence that are supposed to distinguish him in the eyes of many French people. However, the question arises of the figure of authority which results from this and which requires man to emancipate himself politically. However, the crest line is very thin between the two poles.
Personal loyalty and political emancipation, a perilous ridge line
“I was an extremely loyal prime minister. Extremely. And now I’m still loyal, but I’m also a completely free man,” he said. insured in April 2021. But is this really the case and, moreover, is it possible? Edouard Philippe had renounced his party (LR) in 2017 and ended up creating a new one, in both cases to remain faithful… to his ideas. This famous Churchillian conception of political parties, recalled by Olivier Faye in The world from September 2020 comes to prove a powerful factor in his popularity, his loyalty to himself. In short, his loyalty. But the presidential camp gets more annoyed. Conflict of legitimacy obliges.
In our opinion, the creation of Horizons established this fall the thin line of crest on which Edouard Philippe has been advancing for at least two years: loyalty to Emmanuel Macron and personal projection towards the future. Because two mortgages weigh on its room for maneuver today. The first is institutional, even crudely logistical: the agenda decreed at the launch of Horizons on projects to 2027 and beyond “It’s about building a party so that our country can look far ahead, strengthen its power”.
–Valery Hache/AFP
However, for the time being, this project located in the interstice between LR and LREM depends on the anchoring and the political resources which its promoter will have (constituencies? finances? elected officials?).
The second mortgage is more personal. Dismissed from Matignon and more or less snubbed by the ex-LR who rallied to the president, Edouard Philippe was opposed by an Elysian veto, at the beginning of January 2022, to the merger between the party Agir and Horizons, one of the issues of which was precisely to pool the resources of the party of Franck Riester sitting in parliament. Edouard Philippe’s response? “I don’t want to be bothered, since it’s a fashionable term”. But still ?
An authority figure still in the making?
The “factory of authority” of the character is long overdue. Too rare are these sequences in which Edouard Philippe allows himself to sketch an emancipation with regard to the Macronian collective. The same thing, moreover, with regard to the public affirmation of one’s convictions. On the retirement age or, more imperative still, on the architecture of a future presidential majority. Especially when these convictions contradict the line decreed by Emmanuel Macron. At the end of the Horizons launch meeting in Le Havre, on October 9, 2021, Edouard Philippe authorized himself the sign of the “V” for victory, a daring symbol replicating the famous Chiraquian gestures during the creation of the RPR in december 1976.
–Jean-Francois Monier/AFP
Another sequence, less publicized, is on the sidelines of Emmanuel Macron’s meeting at L’Arena, this April 2, 2022, in a bar, standing and on a chair, that he promised supporters to defend the Horizons space after the second round of the presidential election on April 24.
In both cases, the presidential camp reacted badly. And for good reason. In The Truth about Edouard Philippethe man certainly says:
« […] If one day I am elected, it is I who will set the course, believe me. And it’s someone else who will struggle to get there. »
In the meantime, the Philippian weighting strives to articulate two narratives in tension: supporting Emmanuel Macron and embodying a political line emancipated from the latter. It must now result in that of an authority figure to be reckoned with on the political spectrum. For this, Edouard Philippe’s ability to capitalize on his personal image and his political stature has become decisive.
In Ethics in Nicomache, Aristotle warns about the limits of moderation and the weight of circumstances in its handling. The radical vitality of the anti-system offers of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen confirms their propensity to define strategies for controlling public and media debate. Is Philippian weighting therefore going against the grain?
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