Under pressure, Elisabeth Borne relies on her method to stay at Matignon

It’s a sentence slipped as if nothing had happened around a question, but it’s a sentence that says a lot. In the program Dimanche en politique on France 3, the Prime Minister ured him, “it is not my temperament to give up”. She was answering a question about her method there, but it is difficult not to hear a message about her destiny at Matignon, she who has been under very strong pressure for many weeks by Emmanuel Macron, first with the preparation of his roadmap then with the 100 day horizon – to July 14 – for a first essment, finally with reframings of the Head of State which seemed to weaken him so much that he had to publicly repeat his confidence in him.

Rumors of a reshuffle are rife, the names of real or supposed contenders for the post of Prime Minister come and go? Never mind, Elisabeth Borne repeated it this Sunday, she has a roadmap with “very concrete things for the French”. And this roadmap, she “wishes to implement it” and “above all to provide answers to our fellow citizens”.

She, whom the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger had accused, during the pension reform, of lacking empathy, wants to show her “attention” to “many concerns of the French”. An expression that she repeated this Sunday at will. It is in this way, by responding “quickly”, that she hopes, like Emmanuel Macron, to p the resentment of many French people vis-à-vis the pension reform . While being well aware that it is not about to fade. “I don’t know if they will forget,” she admits.

The confidence of the President and Parliament

In a few minutes, here she is reviewing multiple subjects while trying to sell her action as head of government: from the agenda of the social partners to the support of RSA beneficiaries, to water and drought, inflation, the housing plan… Without forgetting the medical deserts – announcements are planned for this Monday on nursing homes – and the “rural plan” (to develop local shops in particular) which the Prime Minister is to unveil this Thursday. At the risk of creating high expectations without quick results. She also points out, on obtaining identity papers, that the deadline has gone from 70 to 50 days and must be reduced to 30 days this summer…

Sweeping the questions on a possible reshuffle, Elisabeth Borne stressed that a Prime Minister “needs both the confidence of the President of the Republic and the confidence of Parliament. With regard to that of Parliament, she seized the “17th motion of censure” – discussed this Monday – to suggest that she has it, since this motion, barring a huge surprise, should not p. “We will see if there is an alternative majority”, she slipped, implying that it does not exist. And then, in the majority, she has the support of the left wing and beyond.

“Leaving Borne after retreats”

As for that of Emmanuel Macron, she also felt that she had it. And too bad if around the head of state, who takes the pulse of his political heavyweights, things are less clear. “We have to get out of Borne, after retirement, we have to move on to something else and to a much more political profile”, erts one of them. And too bad if, again, like this Sunday on Europe 1 , the portrait that the president of the Modem François Bayrou makes of a Prime Minister does not really seem to correspond to the image he has of Elisabeth Borne. “Matignon needs a capacity for autonomy and a very great complicity with the Prime Minister”, described the mayor of Pau. But the latter also hammered that the head of government must come from the “central bloc”.

Elisabeth Borne knows the hostility of François Bayrou and part of the majority to any Prime Minister from the right. Which is not an easy task with a relative majority and divided LRs. Also, she reaffirmed her method, which is to move forward by finding majorities “text by text”. “Today, I don’t see any other method that will allow us to move forward,” she said. She also slipped not to be interested in 2027 – which is not the case for all the suitors – before letting go, questioned about the ax of the 100 days: “We must act on all fronts […]. The concerns, they don’t stop this summer, the answers we provide, they don’t stop this summer”. Implied, she probably hopes, neither is her lease.