“After the vote, I dream of a large coalition.”

“What should a northern man drink here?” Edward Philip Sitting for an aperitif on the canal in Sète, the small town in the south of France where Georges Brassens and Paul Valéry, among others, were born. They brought him bac-a-lô (a kind of lemonade, because here we are close to Montpellier, and pastis would be something for the people of Marseille, they explain), and then the mayor of Le Havre, a thousand kilometers away, spoke to the local candidates of his party and explained the prospects of leaving French political crisis: “We have to learn to do something that is normal in many large countries, viz He rules with a large coalition». In essence, the former Prime Minister proposes to prove what Macron, due to his personality or political inability, would never attempt to do: Expand the majorityNegotiating, persuading and reconciling with the more moderate parts of the right and left, but without the goal of emptying them. Winning partners, not spoils of war.

“Macron’s majority is dead, and it was the president who killed it. But we have a solution at hand that will avoid us ending up in the pincers formed by the National Rally on the right and France Insoumise on the left. We point out that it looks like a government of national unity, a solution reminiscent of pre-Meloni Italy.”Italy has always been a political example. Or rather, Italy has always been aware of political situations and has to make decisions that then also arise in France and which we end up facing. We French must observe Italy more, its difficulties, its contradictions and its solutions.”

Like many Frenchmen who love our country – “Sicily, but also Milan, Bologna, Pisa and Lucca” – and admire its political chemistry, Philippe speaks of the depth of the Macronian majority but actually wants to go beyond the hasty reconfiguration of these days, with three opposing blocs – the right, the left and the weaker Macronite centre – which They seem to be vying for victory. The first prime minister under Macron, he then accompanied him to Le Havre when he became too popular for the president’s tastes. He dreams of a coalition that moves from the anti-Bardella de Gaulle right to the moderate anti-Mélechon left.From Javier Bertrand to Raphael Glucksmann, “A coalition that will represent the majority of the French, who want neither the National Front at all nor a new Popular Front that includes not only Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but also those who are more supportive of the party.” To the left of it, such as the new anti-capitalist party.”

In the days when Emmanuel Macron raises the possibility of “civil war if the extremists win” we are already thinking about the possibilities suburban riots If the anti-foreigner party of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen wins, Édouard Philippe’s calm style will still stand out, as it has always been the case in recent years. If Macron ended up being hated by many because he was seen as arrogant, harsh, and unfit to listen and therefore to compromise, Philippe is a curious example of an over-diploma (the usual course of the elite, political sciences and then ina) who nevertheless is Basically nice for everyone: Maybe because he takes problems seriously, and doesn’t take himself seriously.

His close friend, director Laurent Sibien (left), gave him a three-part documentary entitled “Edouard, my right-wing friend,” in which he depicts him from his victorious re-election in Le Havre in 2014 to the dramatic stage. To manage Covid as prime minister in spring 2020. “Putin, how tired I am. I’m cooked!” he admits to the camera in the days of lockdown. “I only have bad choices, some worse than others, and none of them good. It’s scary.”

However, in the evening, Philippe spoke to the French on television in a clear, efficient and precise manner, without fuss. From those days in Matignon, Edouard Philippe derived the collapse of the agreement with Macron (who favored the colorless Jean Castex), a lot of stress and two autoimmune diseases, vitiligo and alopecia: first white spots on the beard, then spots on the skin and finally no more hair. “I understood the purpose of eyebrows,” he says regarding his apparent physical transformation: “to be noticed when they fall.”

A great and affectionate imitator of Giscard d’Estaing, gifted with a sense of humor but never sharp, in these hours Édouard Philippe was among the few opponents of the National Front who respected his voters: “It is very easy to love democracy as long as democracy agrees with me.” But he does not stop. On criticizing the Bardella Declaration, which wants to keep French people with dual passports out of strategic jobs, after all, we are in Sète, the city of Georges Brassens, who attacked chauvinists and nationalists in the poem “Those who are born somewhere.” The debate against dual nationals reveals something deep in the National Assembly: their need to divide, to create different categories of French people that I do not like.