François Bayrou will not enter the government, he announced on Wednesday evening, putting an end to the rumors which had been circulating since Monday and his acquittal in the affair of the MEPs’ assistants. What matters are the words chosen by the leader of the MoDem.
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“I could not agree to enter the government without deep agreement on the policy to follow”, assures François Bayrou, while his name is circulating in the context of the reshuffle. Since his release in the affair of the parliamentary assistants on Monday, the mayor of Pau feels strong. He wants his support for Emmanuel Macron to pay off and be rewarded with ministerial portfolios, three or four.
But François Bayrou explains that he did not reach an agreement with the president and the Prime Minister who offered him the Ministry of the Armed Forces, which did not interest him. On the other hand, the centrist imagined himself replacing Amélie Oudea-Castera at National Education, a ministry he already headed, but he noticed a “difference of approach on the method to follow” who “seems prohibitive”. Thursday morning on franceinfo, he clarified that he had not “candidate” for the position, but said to himself “convinced that we can straighten out National Education“. That “asks for a political choice which is to do this with teachers and other school stakeholders“. Gold, “we have background music which is: ‘teachers don’t work enough’”regrets François Bayrou.
François Bayrou would also have seen himself at the head of a super ministry of Territorial Planning, Simplification and State Reform, working in particular on “the gulf between Paris and the provinces” and on the “distance between citizens and public action”. But impossible to do business with Gabriel Attal. Shock of generations? The cloth burns: “Things went badly on the phone between them yesterday afternoon,” says a witness, for whom “Bayrou is sanguine, pumped up like a Swiss cuckoo”.
Dissent?
François Bayrou says it himself: everything is recoverable, except that, when he slams the door so loudly, there is little chance that he will reopen it behind, according to his friends. The head of MoDem had not announced his refusal to enter the government to his deputies who learned it like everyone else at the start of the evening. They also criticized him for this lack of consultation, during a dinner that had been planned for a long time. Jean-Louis Bourlanges even accused him in a press release published on X d’“weaken dangerously” the majority, while “discrediting” his side.
And the loud slamming of the door was not appreciated on the Macronie side either.
“Bayrou has always been very greedy, too much so. We give him our hand, he sucks our arm.”
A government advisorat franceinfo
The situation could turn against the boss of MoDem, believes this same advisor. “The Béarn wild boar is tough in business but still, the words he chooses seem like an emancipation”worries a deputy from the Renaissance group who recalls that the MoDem has 50 seats and therefore 50 votes in the Assembly.
“He is capable of black anger, but also of calming down afterwards,” However, a ministerial advisor is reassured. For the moment, nothing indicates whether this is just a personal attack by François Bayrou, or whether he intends to truly enter into dissidence. He himself affirms on franceinfo that no, that his party remains “full member of the majority that wants to rebuild the country” and that he does not have “Never” regretted his support for Emmanuel Macron. The full composition of the government expected in the coming hours will show whether or not the MoDem still has its place in Macronie. But, Wednesday evening, an advisor to the executive tried to reassure: we cannot talk about “political crisis”.