Paul Magnette’s Bouchéisation is gradually scaring off his own PS

“We don’t understand.” We noted that reaction this week on various local, Walloon and federal PS cabinets. Off the record, admittedly. It is not the style of the French-speaking socialists to openly resign the chairman. But next Monday Magnette has something to explain at the party office. Nota bene about a interview in Smoke, so one for the Flemish ‘other side’. Everyone has remembered exactly two sentences of that six-page interview since it appeared online on Monday: ‘That’s why I would like to realize the e-commerce trip after the core trip. Let Belgium become a country without e-commerce, with real shops and vibrant cities.’ Neatly proofread and approved at the PS headquarters on Keizerslaan in Brussels.

If that provocation seemed like a good idea there, people thought differently a little further on, in Namur. Walloon Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo (PS) sighed deeply in the Elysette, his official residence. Even when he was Belgian Prime Minister, Di Rupo made an effort to develop good relations with China, in order to get the e-commerce company Alibaba to Belgium, among other things. That is why the mayor of Liège, Willy Demeyer, had to bite his teeth. Obliged. Keizerslaan kept communication under control after Monday. Magnette had only wanted to start the debate. Coaster is the beautiful word that is used for it in French-speaking Belgium. Magnette had to straighten out what he had bent himself. And no, that should not complicate government work. Wish the e-commerce out of the country on Monday, negotiate a relaxation to attract just more e-commerce: no contradiction, says Magnette. It is up to his Deputy Prime Minister Pierre-Yves Dermagne to bring this straddle position to a successful conclusion.

T-shirt for 3 euros

The fact that the PS sells T-shirts on its website for 3 euros did not do much good for the credibility of Magnette’s sortie from the start. And then came the news this week that Glass Factory AGC Fleurus in Charleroi, where Magnette is mayor, wants to close the doors. For the city it would mean the end of an industry in which the region was lord and master for decades. And that while Charleroi already has the highest unemployment of all Belgian cities. More than one in five Carolo’s is out of work. Anyone who loses those ‘old’ jobs and does not want the ‘new’ jobs does not threaten to change that reality quickly.

Although Magnette at the birth of Vivaldi promised not to play mother-in-lawit is stronger than itself

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Hence the misunderstanding within the own party. A federal PS source: ‘I don’t understand sometimes either. Even all those little ambiguous sentences about Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. Since the negotiations in the Egmont Palace, there is something skewed between the two. they don’t have operating mode found it.’

(No) mother-in-law

It’s a bridge that is made more to get the interview in Smoke to indicate. The profiling there does not stand alone. Although Magnette at the birth of Vivaldi promised not to play mother-in-law, it is stronger than itself. The examples are known. Magnette had Dermagne amend the October budget agreement at the eleventh hour – precisely on the basis of the agreement to make e-commerce more flexible. And the government also thought it had reached an agreement on the mandatory vaccination in health care until Magnette came back to it. That file, too, continues to drag on.

Magnette indeed did not fail to give De Croo several poor preparation and bad appointments to blame. It indicates a deeper frustration. Magnette considers the Vivaldi coalition to be his credit. And had it not been for Open VLD and the ambitions of Alexander De Croo, he would have forged that coalition in December 2019 instead of a good year later. That he, the architect and the chairman of the largest coalition partner, finally had to relinquish the premiership to De Croo was not obvious, he also admitted in the Smoke-interview. “Then you’ll have to swallow.” According to the liberals, this frustration explains the persistent criticism of De Croo. Even within the PS it is whispered that De Croo should not shine too much, if Magnette still wants to be able to enter 16 Wetstraat in 2024. Magnette himself sells his criticism of De Croo just like a vote of confidence. “It was necessary to do that publicly as well, because I really want Vivaldi to succeed.” The fact that he underscores the latter illustrates his realization that he is against appearances.

Nobody at ease

That is why Open VLD chairman Egbert Lachaert went to lunch with Magnette this week. It probably does little to keep the machine running smoothly at all. “No one is comfortable in this government. But nobody dares to pull the plug,” said a PS cabintard. Will something change then? ‘I do not think so. Landing the pension file will still be difficult, because none of those texts have changed. And then there’s the 2023 wage meeting. I bet they just can’t get past that.’

That was also inconvenient for Vivaldi and Magnette this week: according to the preliminary calculations of the Central Council for Business, Belgium’s wage cost handicap is growing and threatens to increase. barely a margin for wage surcharge on top of the index in the coming years. Discussions about this between employers and trade unions will not start until next year, but are already casting their shadows ahead. Magnette will then again come under heavy pressure to join the unions in demanding the abolition of the wage law, something the liberals kept out of the coalition agreement. Ever since the last, hotly contested, wage agreement of 2021, the government has feared that it will block this completely in 2023, especially if the PS gets the impression that major electoral damage is imminent.

alpha to omega

That arithmetic often remains the alpha and omega in politics. The PS fears that it will be sandwiched. On the one hand, the party is becoming squeamish about the well-adjusted communication machine PTB/PVDA, where Raoul Hedebouw as chairman can now put his weight in the balance even more. And on the other hand, there is the MR where Georges-Louis Bouchez is determined to become the biggest in French-speaking Belgium and tweets on everything that moves. The liberal has repeatedly shown that he is willing to drive the coalitions of which he is a part into the ditch – or at least to pretend – if it benefits his party. But now Magnette is also increasingly on that path. Too often and too impulsively, party members fear. There has also recently been a word for this in the Wetstraat: de Corking from Magnette. The interview in Smoke is submitted as evidence. That interview in which he said what he said the next day that he hadn’t meant it that way.

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