It was the umpteenth twist in the bad soap opera that is currently playing out at the highest levels of the French state. That is how one could sum up the interview that interior minister Gérard Collomb gave the website of Le Figaro newspaper on Tuesday October 2nd, in which he said he was maintaining his “offer to resign”. The previous day the minister had already told the same newspaper that he had offered his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron so he could focus fully on the campaign he wanted to run to win back his old job as mayor of Lyon in the 2020 local elections.
That initial offer had been rejected by the Élysée, which urgently put together a statement restating its “confidence” in the minister, who is number two in the government after prime minister Édouard Philippe. But Collomb did not give up. He was determined to go - and straight away. So it was that just a few minutes after Édouard Philippe had stood up in the National Assembly to defend his interior minister, Collomb dropped a new bombshell. “We need clarity in relation to our fellow citizens and clarity towards the people of Lyon,” Collomb told Le Figaro. This was precisely the same argument used by members of the opposition when Collomb had first publicly expressed his desire to stand as a candidate in Lyon in an interview with L'Express magazine last month.
To see a minister forcing the hand of a president in order to leave the government is unprecedented in France's Fifth Republic, which dates from 1958. When prime minister Édouard Philippe was questioned about this latest development he said he was not going to comment on “such or such a news item”. But, not bothering to disguise his anger and seeking to bring matters to an end, he said that in his role as prime minister he would “carry out all [my] constitutional duties”and propose to the president “the decisions that have to be taken”.
“The president of the Republic is thus awaiting the prime minister's propositions,” responded the Elysée which could do little more than acknowledge the decision made by Gérard Collomb. Nonetheless the spokesman for the government, Benjamin Griveaux, acted as if nothing had changed when he insisted at the National Assembly that the minister of the interior would be going to Rodez in southern France – where a police chief was murdered recently – on Thursday, as announced in the official diary of engagements. This announcement came just as Collomb's latest interview with Le Figaro was being published.
Later the prime minister's proposals became clear when it was announced that Édouard Philippe himself will take over as interim interior minister until a permanent successor is found. Meanwhile, it wasalso reported on Tuesday night that the current mayor of Lyon, Georges Képénékian, was himself resigning to allow Gérard Collomb to resume the position of mayor of the city that he had relinquished when he became a minister in May 2017.
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So after ten days of toing and froing, the replacement of Gérard Collomb as minister of the interior is now a fait accompli. The departure of this loyal figure, who was one of the first senior figures in French politics to flock to Emmanuel Macron, and who is said to have a father and son-like, “inseparable” relationship with Macron, and even more so the manner of his departure says a great deal about this government's fragility. The president, who had hoped to keep his minister until at least the European elections in May 2019, will thus be forced to carry out a second reshuffle just a month after the surprise departure of environment minister Nicolas Hulot.
In the space of a few weeks the French head of state has not just lost two government heavyweights – and there are not many of them to lose; he has also seen his political capital rapidly reduced, leaving him in a weaker state than ever. Yet Emmanuel Macron had been so sure of himself at the start. “If elected I well nominate a government that is destined to last,” he told Mediapart on May 5th, 2017, two days before he was elected president. Within just a year, however, he has already had a change of defence minister (Sylvie Goulard replaced by Florence Parly), of justice minister (François Bayrou replaced by Nicole Belloubet) and now the minister of the interior.
In other words, three of the five key offices of state have seen a change of personnel since the start of the presidency. This has taken place against a backdrop of affairs and personal ambitions in an atmosphere that recalls previous presidencies. But it is even worse at the Ministry of Interior at Place Beauvau in central Paris, as shown by a grotesque episode on the evening of Monday October 1st. A few hours before an official visit to Guinea and with the car that was to escort him to the airport already waiting with its engine running, Gérard Collomb decided to cross Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, which separates his ministry from the Élysée, to hand his resignation to the president. As we now know, the president refused it. And the trip to Guinea was cancelled.
For two weeks his office at the Ministry of the Interior has had to deal with the minister's public comments and the successive departure of senior staff. The main one was Collomb's chief of staff, Jean-Marie Girier, who has joined the office of Richard Ferrand, the new president of the National Assembly. As for the prime minister's official residence, Matignon, it seems to have heard about the latest developments at the Ministry of the Interior from the media like everyone else. In the same way that no one thought fit to inform the prime minister about the Alexandre Benalla affair before it was revealed in Le Monde, Gérard Collomb's interview for Le Figaro appears not to have been read by the prime minister's office, as is usually the case systematically with all ministers' interviews.
MPs in the ruling party La République en Marche! (LREM), where there are growing doubts and tensions over recent events, want just one thing – for the Collomb affair to be over. “In view of the issues at stake such as the fight against terrorism, against people smugglers and traffickers, even if I think it isn't a political crisis, this sequence must come to an end and we must know quickly if Gérard Collomb is staying in or leaving the government,” said LREM MP Caroline Abadie, who is in charge of security issues in the party, before news of Collomb's departure was announced.
Refusing to take a stance with events still unfolding, her fellow MP Marie Guévenoux was instead in a questioning mood. “Two questions arise after Gérard Collomb's declarations. Had some ministers before him decided to run a campaign? Were there hidden agendas, while Gérard Collomb was open and frank in announcing that he wanted to devote himself to Lyon after the European campaign? Was that weakening him? It appears he thinks that is the case, that this weakening had not been sorted out, even if that is not the Élysée's analysis.”
More generally, most LREM MPs did not want to talk about the Collomb affair, for as the party's group at the Assembly has been instructed “it's not for Parliamentarians to comment on government news”. However, the MP Olga Givernet said: “Let's hope this decision doesn't destabilise the Parliamentary majority.”
Opposition parties, though, eagerly leapt on the news of Collomb's departure in such unusual circumstances. Even before the minister's second Le Figaro interview, Éric Ciotti, an MP for the conservative Les Républicains, who often speaks on security matters, had tackled the prime minister Édouard Philippe about the issue at the National Assembly. “With violence constantly rising … while we are faced with a terrorist threat that is, alas, not getting any smaller, while our country is confronted with a major migration crisis, this is the time the minister of the interior chooses to say that he is going to carry out his job alternately, the mornings in Paris and the afternoons and weekends in Lyon,” the MP declared.
Fellow LR MPs quickly joined in the attack. “This morning Macron was proclaiming himself master of time by refusing Collomb's resignation, this evening there are no more [clock] hands at the top of the Élysée,” said MP Damien Abad on BFM TV. “Meanwhile we are still awaiting the new pilot at [the Ministry of the Interior]!”
On the Left, too, MPs switched between irony and consternation at developments, with the word “stampede” on everyone's lips. “It could all be quite funny if it wasn't one of the main offices of state,” said Éric Coquerel, MP for the radical left La France Insoumise (FI). “After the Benalla affair and the departure of Nicolas Hulot, the Collomb resignation is a new symptom of Macron's privatisation of power,” he said. “The government is in melt down, everything's going on behind Édoaurd Philippe's back because Macron wants to concentrates all the powers. But the result is that it's weakening the whole structure.”
The socialist MP Boris Vallaud said the situation was “completely bonkers”. He added: “This discordance at the top of the state must be sorted out. Macron has to decide! We need a government that works!”.
The first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, said the current spectacle was a cross between a horror show and a stampede. “After the number three in the government [editor's note, Nicolas Hulot], here's the minister of the interior now walking out of the government. Jupiter has fallen from Olympus,” said Faure, an ironic reference to claims by Macron during his election campaign that he wanted a 'Jupiterian' presidency, in which he stood above the political fray.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version and additional reporting by Michael Streeter