During the handover on Monday morning, the new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, outlined his “three priorities”: “The first, restore order. The second, restore order. The third, restore order.” A martial posture that is reminiscent of certain phrases uttered by other politicians before him.
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“Restore order in the streets and at the borders”, This is the objective that Bruno Retailleau set himself on Monday, September 23, when he took up his duties at Place Beauvau. The new Minister of the Interior knows his classics. He has taken on accents inspired by one of his distant predecessors, another Vendéen, Georges Clemenceau. “Domestic policy, I wage war, foreign policy, I wage war. I always wage war,” said the Tiger in 1918. Bruno Retailleau also displayed three “priorities”: “The first restore order, the second restore order, the third restore order! This bellicose mimicry is loaded with meaning. The new Minister of the Interior sees himself as being in a state of war against insecurity. In the opposition, Bruno Retailleau was accustomed to this kind of chin-thumping. In power, the same attitude is riskier.
It could cause the fragile government coalition to explode. Its main support is the Ensemble group. The Macronists were already happily tearing each other apart over sovereign issues under the Borne and Attal governments. Many are already threatening to abandon the government if Bruno Retailleau decides to present a new bill incorporating provisions of the immigration law censored by the Constitutional Council in December 2023. Moreover, behind his bluster, the new minister prefers to mention possible decrees or new circulars to the prefects. The other problem is that this tactic is a bit of a rehash…
You surely remember Nicolas Sarkozy’s words in Argenteuil in 2005, almost 20 years ago: “Are you tired of this bunch of scum? We’ll get rid of them!” Even at that time, the tenant of Place Beauvau was adopting martial poses and drawing his “karcher”. With the aim of siphoning off Le Pen voters. The trick worked well in 2007, less so afterwards, the number had become dull. Bruno Retailleau is taking it up again. Like Sarkozy in his time, for example, he took care to describe on Monday the suffering of the ““Schoolboy beaten up” of “the raped girl”of “the gendarme’s widow in mourning”, “victims of a barbarity that has become almost daily.”
Harsh images, strong words, the same panoply to try to win back RN voters. The tone may bother Marine Le Pen. Not sure that it will be enough to make the far right, which obtained five times more votes than LR in the first round of the legislative elections in June, permanently retreat.