François Bayrou is ready, and has been for decades. His ambition for high republican honor is so proverbial that it has long been a running joke in French politics. A real satirical number almost. He was always ignored. And with each passing year his impatience became a little greater, no wonder: the Christian Democrat from the Pyrenees, president of the small center party MoDem, is already 73 years old.
Now, in one of the most delicate moments of the Fifth Republic, President Emmanuel Macron has made him prime minister because he may have exactly the right profile for it.
François Bayrou is the personified center of French politics. “L’éternel centriste”, that’s what he is also called, the eternal centrist. Sometimes he is just to the right of center, sometimes just to the left. He dances on the center line, you could also say: he sways. Since parties that otherwise cannot get along have to get along with each other, a mediator between the right and the left is almost indispensable, a bridge builder. Someone with many years of experience in parliament, too, now that the domestic political music is no longer playing in the Palais de l’Élysée, the president’s palace, but in the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the National Assembly. This has never been as chaotic since 1958 as it is right now.
His biggest asset is his rural origins
This is all Bayrou. But will that be enough to break the deadlock in parliament and stay in office longer than his predecessor Michel Barnier? It only lasted three months. In the past few days, when he was once again considered the favorite and everyone was wondering whether things would work out with the always ready Bayrou, he told his entourage that the planets were aligned, so the starting position was ideal. He also stopped by the Élysée several times, never without being noticed.
Bayrou is the fourth head of government this year. That’s why in France they talk about “Italian conditions”. To be fair, it has to be said that in Italy there were rarely more than two per year. Bayrou hopes that the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists will not overthrow him because he is not a right-winger. He is also not a pure Macronist, although he has been at Macron’s side since he took over as head of state in 2017. Bayrou has always remained loyal to the president. But he also has his own mind, a pretty stubborn one.
Bayrou’s greatest asset is his rural origins, he knows it, he flirts with it. The French love “Rural France” and the myths that surround it. Bayrou comes from Bordères, a small municipality in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department with fewer than a thousand inhabitants, not far from the Spanish border. Apart from the overseas territories, there is hardly an area of France that is further away from Paris and its elite world than this corner in the southwest of the country – in a sense. That’s why this alliance was of central importance for Macron: Bayrou rounded out his image, it grounded him a little.
He was already a minister under President Mitterrand
Bayrou grew up on the farm, and he always likes to remember that, now that the farmers are in turmoil. His love of literature brought him to the University of Bordeaux, where he studied classical philology and later became a teacher. He discovered politics at home; his father was mayor of Bordères. In 2014, after several attempts, the son became mayor of Pau, the next larger city with 80,000 inhabitants, but by then he had long since become a national figure. In the 1990s, when the socialist president François Mitterrand had to govern with the bourgeoisie, Bayrou became education minister for more than four years. And he was popular with the people.
He ran for president three times. In 2002 he came fourth and in 2007 he even came third with almost seven million votes, ahead of Jean-Marie Le Pen from the extreme right Front National. In 2012, Bayrou came fifth in the first round of voting and then called for the election of the socialist candidate François Hollande. And his opponent Nicolas Sarkozy has never forgiven him for that, not until today. In the past few days, we hear from well-informed circles, Sarkozy is said to have persuaded Macron several times to prevent Bayrou – without success. It is therefore quite possible that the Sarkozyists in the ranks of the Républicains will receive Bayrou’s appointment with a lot of skepticism. And that’s a problem: the new prime minister needs the party to govern.
But Bayrou also needs the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists – at least he must be able to count on them not supporting a motion of no confidence against him and overthrowing him in the coming months. That is the goal set: a non-aggression pact. It probably won’t be enough if Bayrou now starts talks to form a new government. The help of part of the left would come from outside: they are not available for ministerial positions. After all, they wanted to appoint the prime minister themselves. For many on the left, Bayrou is also an expression of Macronism, its co-inventor, so to speak.
His rather broad tolerance almost proved to be Bayrou’s downfall. The Lepenists are also quite good with him, at least he always tried to maintain a friendly tone with the extreme right. He recently expressed solidarity with Marine Le Pen after the Paris public prosecutor’s office demanded a prison sentence and the deprivation of the right to stand for five years in a trial over embezzled funds. If she were to be sentenced under this sentence, she would be barred from running for the next presidential election.
However, the solidarity does not come by chance. People from Bayrou’s MoDem were also convicted in an almost identical but much smaller case. Party President Bayrou himself escaped unscathed, but the horror is still deep. If he had been convicted, his promotion to the higher spheres of the republic would have been nothing.
#François #Bayrou #Frances #eternal #centrist
