Elisabeth Borne left the Elysée through a discreet door, the one dedicated to secret meetings which, from the presidential gardens, makes it possible to avoid attacks from the press. This Monday, January 8, moved, the Prime Minister has just submitted her resignation to the Head of State, who accepted it. It’s a little after 4 p.m. Emmanuel Macron is preparing to receive the members of the Constitutional Council to pronounce his traditional wishes, while the now “ex” head of government rushes into her sedan to leave rue de Varenne.
“Mr. President, you informed me of your desire to appoint a new prime minister,” she wrote in her letter, continuing: “While I must submit my resignation, I wanted to tell you how passionate I was about this mission. » The words, borrowed from the missive written by Michel Rocard upon his departure from Matignon, in 1991, during the second seven-year term of François Mitterrand, must recall the left-wing references of the former advisor to Lionel Jospin, who had the government adopt Parliament a law on immigration presented by the far right as a “ideological victory”.
The Rocardian reference also means that the former prefect, appointed to Matignon in May 2022, is leaving rue de Varenne reluctantly. ” I got fired “, had scathed, in front of the press, Michel Rocard, apostle of the second left. “She started like Jospin and ends like Rocard. It’s a destiny”sighs, mockingly, an advisor to the Elysée.
Two hours stretch without anything filtering out of this confidential interview between the two heads of the executive. The fate of the Prime Minister, absent from the wishes of the Constitutional Council, is no longer in doubt. But Emmanuel Macron says nothing. It is 6 p.m. when the President of the Republic puts an end to the suspense and thanks the head of government with a tweet, praising her work “exemplary” and boasting ” his courage “. “With all my heart, thank you”he signs, illustrating his words with a photo showing him, laughing, alongside Elisabeth Borne.
Throughout the evening, observers searched, in vain, for the political significance of this departure. Elisabeth Borne went through crises and carried out the mission entrusted by the President of the Republic, by painfully adopting the pension reform in spring 2023, then the “immigration” law the following December, at the cost of great turbulence in the majority. A priesthood. Why sacrifice it? “No institutional logic explains the departure of Elisabeth Borne”, deciphers Jean-Philippe Derosier, specialist in constitutional law. “She did a good job”we concede at the Elysée.
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