Erreur de Castex? Astonishment and bad puns as Macron names his new PM

It’s not yet entirely clear when Emmanuel Macron took the decision to change his PM. I expect a fastbook on the topic to drop into French librairies this summer. In any case, formal confirmation that he had activated Article 8 of the constitution finally emerged on the morning of Friday 3 July 2020. For a long time there had been talk of a remaniement - a reshuffle - but in fact we got a full changement de gouvernement. Edouard Philippe, re-elected mayor of Le Havre on 28 June (he was mayor there from 2014 to 2017) was thanked for all his hard work and in his place we learned that Macron had appointed the ‘unknown’ Jean Castex. (For the Paris-based political chatterati, Castex’s crimes include being unknown, a bit gauche and having un accent gersois…)

You would have needed a very reliable inside line to the Elysée to have predicted the elevation of Monsieur Déconfinement to the premiership. I wrote a little about Castex here already and will expand on that in this entry. I will also assess what his appointment means politically, as well as how and what the shape of the new government means. There is no doubt that his name was indeed little-known to the French, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Not many people had heard of Georges Pompidou when he became PM back in 1962 - and look how that turned out. It’s very easy looking back to imagine that in April 1962 everyone was expecting ‘Pompom’, but in fact not. All of France and Navarre now knows who Jean Castex is.

Like his immediate predecessor, and many of his less immediate ones, Castex is cast in the classic mould of the French technocratic haut fonctionnaire. But he is also one who is, thanks to French law on eligibility to hold public office, an élu. Since 2008, he has been the mayor of Prades, a small town of roughly 6,000 inhabitants in the foothills of the Pyrénées-Orientales, about 45 kilometres west of Perpignan. He and his list were re-elected back on 15 March. Since his appointment as PM, Castex has stood down as mayor but remains a member of the town council.

Even before Macron and Castex had announced the shape of the new government, the appointment was being interpreted as further confirmation of the droitisation of the administration and of a drift towards a Macronian version of hyperprésidentialisme. Castex was elevated to the post of assistant general secretary of the Elysée during the Sarkozy presidency (2007-2012), so the argument goes that making him PM was further evidence that the last-President-but-one has become Macron’s role model and guru. As you would expect, it’s more complicated than that. There is an excellent article that expands and explores that theme by Cécile Amar, Julien Martin, and Maël Thierry in L’Obs, here, and which deserves ten minutes of anyone’s time. I make no apology for following some of their arguments here.

While it is true that Castex reached the first pinnacle of his career as a civil servant under Sarkozy, he owed it more to his political proximity to Xavier Bertrand, who held a series of health and social affairs portfolios from 2004 until 2012, under two Presidents and three Prime Ministers. He is now president of the region of the Hauts-de-France (formed by the merging of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie). Attentive readers of my previous entries will know that Bertrand left Les Républicains in 2017 after the party’s own rightward shift towards a more identitarian form of politics under Laurent Wauquiez, and has never gone back, ploughing his own singular furrow in the north.

Briefly, Castex is not a sarkozyste. The former President’s warm endorsement of the new PM on the morning of his appointment was intended to call of the LR attack dogs rather than to signal the arrival of a protégé at the Hôtel Matignon. Its success was limited.

The important point is that Xavier Bertrand, and by extension Castex, is un gaulliste social and very different from what one might call the gaulliste libéral Edouard Philippe (if the latter is even really a Gaullist at all). Asked if he was willing to take the last two years of the Macron presidency down a more ‘social’ path, Philippe is supposed to have replied ‘if you want Pierre Mauroy, go fetch Pierre Mauroy’, a tart reference to the late Socialist PM who implemented ‘Keynesiansim in one country’ under François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1983.

The irony is, of course, that Castex was the man recommended by Philippe to Macron to come up with the plan for France to leave lockdown. (The other irony is that while the déconfinement plan was worked out by Castex under Macron’s direction, Philippe reaped most of the credit.) Castex’s qualities as a negotiator able to manouevre between different parties and stakeholders had already been demonstrated in the part he played representing the government within the Paris 2024 Olympic bid, a role that consolidated his reputation on the left as an ‘honest broker’. That might sound something of a cliché (it is), but it is not the least of qualities for the head of a government that is facing a monumental social challenge coming out of the first phase of the Covid-19 crisis. And of course, Castex has a pretty clear view of how to handle a second wave.

His experience as a local élu can account also for his determination with the déconfinement plan to make local authorities key players in the process and to devise a scheme that gave them a great deal of freedom to act according to conditions on the ground but which was also delivered with a clarity that left mayors and the prefectorial counterparts in no doubt as to their rights and responsibilities towards one another. No-one would pretend it worked perfectly or without a hitch, but seen from this side of the Channel…

While his ‘social’ profile did much to recommend Castex, so did his politics. He is, or was until 29 June a member of Les Républicains. He quit the party not on being appointed PM, but according to his version of events because of LR’s failure to prevent Louis Aliot of the Rassemblement National taking Perpignan city hall. It seems unlikely that he did not already know on 28 June of his impending promotion, but that’s his story. It was also telling that on the morning of the announcement that Castex was the new PM, LR rolled out no less a figure than the party president Christian Jacob, doing the rounds of myriad heavyweight political chat shows to try to limit the damage of yet another party member (or ex-member) defecting to la macronie. The challenge his appointment presents to LR was perhaps best summed up by the cartoonist KAK, who draws for L’Opinion. KAK depicted a frowning, bull-like Jacob dressed in overalls and armed with a pitchfork, defending a cherry tree from scrumpers, while Macron and Castex have climbed a ladder behind him and are - of course - cherry-picking over the wall.

Of course, it isn’t just that Macron has syphoned of another member of LR. Jacob was right. Castex was not a big-hitter in the party. But it is a blow, as Macron moves to occupy the space on the centre-right, not just to LR but also to Xavier Bertrand, who might well be harbouring ambitions for 2022 as an independent, non-aligned candidate, much like Macron in 2017. Castex at Matignon does not rule out a Bertrand candidature, but it makes the space on the centre-right begin to look crowded. Again, the deployment of LR heavyweights Gérard Larcher and Bruno Retailleau to be interviewed by various news outlets after the appointment of the new government tells us more about the state of the party than it does the government.

The right is not entirely without resources, however, and on Wednesday 8 July, as government ministers were speaking in both houses of parliament, a meeting of Territoires Unis, an umbrella of all the local government associations met at the Senate to launch a challenge to the government over decentralisation and a great deal more.

After the announcement of the appointment of Castex, the view was widely shared among commentators that this meant that we were witnessing the withering away of the office of PM and entering into a phase where Macron would be managing the day-to-day conduct of government. That may well be the case and it is very telling that many of the key civil servants in key ministries are being appointed by Macron and the Elysée, not chosen by the new ministers. Nevertheless , it is already clear from some of the ministerial appointments that Castex has imposed himself on some of the choices - for good or ill. Macron, for example, had wanted to move Jean-Michel Blanquer from education to interior to replace the hapless Christophe Castaner. Castex insisted on another of Sarkozy/Bertrand protégé, Gérald Darmanin, and leaving Blanquer where he was.

The appointments of Darmanin and the new justice minister, Eric Dupond-Moretti are, to say the least, controversial. Darmanin is facing allegations that, in 2009, he was approached by a woman asking him to use his influence (within the then ruling UMP) to clear her criminal record. It is alleged that Darmanin offered to do so in exchange for sexual favours. The case was brought in 2018 , but dismissed in August of that year. The plaintiff appealed. The Court of Appeal rejected this as being lodged too late. The Court of Cassation, which hears appeals on grounds of procedure, however over-ruled the verdict and on 9 June the Court of Appeal in Paris announced that Darmanin is being investigated on counts of rape, sexual harassment and abuse of trust. And now he is le premier flic de France.

Dupond-Moretti is an outspoken avocat with a high media profile and was most recently in the spotlight defending the disgraced right-wing political couple Partick and Isabelle Balkany. He has, in the past, been outspokenly dismissive of the #MeToo movement. Watching the announcement of the new government live on Monday 6 July via LCI, there was a palpable intake of breath among the guests on the plateau when the name of Dupond-Moretti, well-known for his views on the need to reform the system of investigating magistrates that prevails in France’s inquisitorial system of justice, was read out. Certainly, for the leaders of the magistrates’ union, the appointment is nothing less than a ‘declaration of war‘. In a government that is supposed to last 600 days, between now and the next Presidential election, it is quite possible to imagine one or the other not lasting much beyond la rentrée in the autumn. An erreur de casting?

In the run-up to the change of government, many commentators wondered if Macron might choose a woman for PM. Back in 2017, when he was being all edgy and progressive, Macron hinted that he could envisage appointing France’s second woman Prime Minister (after Edith Cression 1992-1993). The possibility was raised again this time and the name of Florence Parly, the armed forces minister appeared to be in the mix. Parly stayed where she was. Instead, Barbara Pompili (formerly of EELV) was brought in at environment and at number three in the government according to ministerial protocol. Among the notional ‘top ten’ by protocol, four ministries went to women. Pompili at three, Parly at six, Elizabeth Borne (to employment from transport) at eight and Jacqueline Gourault (no change at local government) at ten. All the régalien ministries have been allotted to men, although the overall balance is 17 women to 15 men in a government of 32 (30 ministers plus the PM and the government spokesman Gabriel Attal). Among the 17 femmes-ministres, Marlène Schiappa has been moved sideways to the ‘citizenship’ portfolio alongside Darmanin, and her post as minister for ‘equality between men and women’ has been expanded to include diversity and social mobility and given to businesswoman Elisabeth Moreno, who is one of nine ministers appointed from civil society.

Pompili’s appointment is a logical one. A former member of Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, she left the party in 2016 over its relationship with the Socialists and became junior minister for biodiversity when Ségolène Royal took on the environment portfolio. Pompili rallied to Macron ahead of the 2017 election, alongside François de Rugy, who served as enviroment minister himslef between September 2018 and July 2019. She was elected LREM deputy for the Somme in 2017 and chairs the National Assembly’s standing committee for sustainable development and the environment. Pompili knows the brief and Macron needs an environment minister with credible green credentials to take forward his plan to meet the programme of the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat, which concluded its delibrations a fortnight ago with a raft of 150 proposals, most of which Macron has committed himself to meeting, possibly even with a referendum next year. Since the conclusion of the Convention and the municipal elections, there has been much talk of the need for Macron to verdir, or ‘green up’. That will be Pompili’s job. It will not be easy.

Pompili may not have been first choice. Royal herself was sounded out by foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Royal was willing, but also wanted to be no.2 behind Castex. Macron refused. Instead, it was another former femme-ministre whose appointment was making the headlines on Tuesday morning: Roselyne Bachelot. Environment minister under Chirac from 2002 to 2004 and the minister of public health under Sarkozy, Bachelot retired from politics in 2012 to pursue a media career, but has been back in the political headlines in recent months regarding France’s long-term planning to cope with the outbreak of a pandemic. Derided for over-ordering face-masks and vaccines when swine flu broke out in 2011, suddenly her stock rose again this spring. On 1 July, Bachelot gave evidence to the National Assembly’s committee of enquiry into the government’s handling of the crisis. Once quoted as saying that she was done with politics, but that she might be tempted by the culture ministry, that’s what Macron offered her and that’s where she is.

What, then, of Edouard Philippe? Well, apart from enjoying more time with his administrés in Le Havre, Macron has asked the former PM to take on a role in reorganising La République en Marche ahead of 2022, which is paradoxical, given that he has never been a member of the party. Philippe has not yet given his answer, but if he did take on the role, that would certainly indicate that if he has presidential ambitions (as some pundits reckon), they are for 2027. In the shorter term, he and his two ministers of health, Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran (who has been kept on by Castex in an enlarged ministry of social solidarity and public health) will have to face questioning by the Cour de Justice de la République over their handling of the Covid-19 crisis in response to a number of civil suits brought by the public. Otherwise, according to friends, he’s fine.

Clockwise from top left: Florence Parly, Elisabeth Moreno, Barbara Pompili, Roselyne Bachelot.