From the reshuffle to Block Everything, political life put to the test of real life

A striking parallelism of screens. Like a symbol of everything that's wrong, a disturbing summary of the political crisis the country is going through. All morning, the screens of the 24-hour news channels were split in two. Images of the demonstrations and attempted blockades on one side. Fixed shots of the steps of the Hôtel Matignon for the transfer of power and cutaways of the debates between political commentators on the other. Like two news programs facing each other, almost hermetic to one another. Like a revelation of what François Bayrou and Sébastien Lecornu both mentioned during their short speeches.

The outgoing Prime Minister spoke of the "reality" that the political class will no longer be able to deny. Obviously, with the state of the French debt in mind. This reality is incontestable. François Bayrou has simply, in recent weeks, made the mistake of zooming in on it to the point that it has obstructed his vision of the other realities of the French, and in particular the daily lives of millions of them, the most vulnerable. The candidate spoke of "this gap between political life and real life" , between "the political situation and what the French expect" . May this phrase not be just a piece of language worked on for a day, to bridge the two screens of the news channels mentioned above.

Sébastien Lecornu also mentioned the necessary "substantive break" that his appointment as head of government must instill. His CV and his loyalty to Emmanuel Macron give reason to doubt this. Faith in politics, the antidote to all the populisms that thrive and undermine our democracy, leads us to credit him with a salutary sincerity. The man is also apparently a skilled and fine negotiator. Consulting political parties and unions as he will do before appointing his government is reassuring in terms of the method. Fundamentally, the question is quite simple: what content will Sébastien Lecornu put behind the word "break" ? This will depend on his ability to reduce "the gap between political life and real life." And not just on screen...