Reshuffle: Castex will resign… but after what longevity?

POLITICS – In football, we would be in extra time for extra time. John Castex about to hand in his resignation to Emmanuel Macronat the beginning of the week, to allow the President of the Republic to appoint his successor at Matignon… and really begin his second term.

“It’s a new era that is opening up,” comments the self-proclaimed “Prime Minister of Stewardship” after 20 months spent in the clothes of head of government. Before all eyes are on the Élysée, and the future strong man or the future strong woman of Macronie, back, in graphics, on the passage of Jean Castex at 57 rue de Varennes.

Jean Castex on the heels of Jean-Marc Ayrault

The 56-year-old enarque stayed at Matignon for 681 days. Or 682 if the suspense were to last until Tuesday. A longevity of just under two years, which ranks him in the bottom third of the ranking of former Prime Ministers, as you can see below. He does a little better than Laurent Fabius (between 84 and 86) but less well (for four days) than Jean-Marc Ayrault, the first head of government under François Hollande.

It is Georges Pompidou and (to a lesser extent) François Fillon who prance in the lead. The first remained more than six years (2279 days) in his post, when the second can boast of having held the reins of Matignon throughout the five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy.

At the bottom of the classification, it is the Socialists who shine by the brevity of their passage. Bernard Cazeneuve holds the record for the most ephemeral Prime Minister with 160 days spent at Matignon. The one who had replaced (at the end of 2016) a Manuel Valls leaving for the primary of the PS, is exceeded, by little, by Edith Cresson.

She is the only one to have held the position. Appointed in 1991 by François Mitterrand, she remained in office for 323 days, less than a year, before bearing the brunt of the PS’s poor results in the interim elections and its growing unpopularity.

A long-awaited woman

Thirty years later, it is therefore a woman who is expected at Matignon; this hypothesis desired by 74% of French people (Ifop poll for Le JDD of May 15) was confirmed this Monday by François Bayrou this franceinfo If this is the case, Edith Cresson wishes him “a lot of courage” with a “macho” political class ”.

After those of the Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne and the former Minister of Health Marisol Touraine, the name that comes up insistently is that of Catherine Vautrin, former Minister of Social Cohesion of Jacques Chirac, who had given her support to Emmanuel Macron before the 1st round of the presidential election.

Also points to the name of the vice-president of the Senate Valérie Létard, stamped “baby Borloo” for having started in politics in Valenciennes alongside the centrist Jean-Louis Borloo, before being Secretary of State in charge of green technologies in his ministry. of Ecology from 2009 to 2010, within the Fillon government.

The choice is all the more expected as it will confirm or not the orientation that the Head of State intends to give himself, who has promised to take into account the anger expressed by many French people during the crisis of “vests yellow” and during the presidential election, and to change the method.