“It’s raining!” Stunned with cold, a man takes refuge under the Clock Gate of Vire, in Calvados. He is immediately joined by a few onlookers, surprised by the intensity of the storm Patricia. The Virois foresee that it is not just a downpour. In the Normandy bocage, we are familiar with this weather; we learned to live with the rain and the wind. But this storm is special. It rains continuously and the winds are violent.
“It’s raining in sciau” (“at seal”) and “it’s a wind to dehorn the oxen”, corrects a Norman, before listing the list of expressions that we found here to describe this capricious weather. Not enough to discourage Elisabeth Borne. The Prime Minister is making a final trip to the constituency where she was elected a year ago – the 6th in Calvados – before the summer break.
Cheered up by her posture at Matignon, she advances with a sure step, braving strong gusts, towards the group of people gathered under the Clock door. Her umbrella almost flies away, but she smiles broadly. She has weathered other storms. The context of relative majority, the ministers who do not print, the tensions with the President of the Republic, the endless soap opera on his reprieve from Matignon… And yet, defying conjecture, she remained in the rue de Varenne. Borne, who assumes the role of “fuse”, held firm.
Jeanine Koch, 91, sees something in common with the city of Vire, heavily bombed in June 1944 but quickly rebuilt. “I am very moved to present to you the power of resilience of the city of which you are a part”, slips this former professor of history and geography to him before starting the visit of an exhibition devoted to the reconstruction of Vire after the Second World War. On June 6, a deluge of shells leveled the Norman city, killing more than 400 inhabitants and forcing thousands more to flee. Everything had to be rebuilt.
“It’s the clock,” he continues. It was not destroyed and the clocks were reset at the precise time of the first bombardments, at 8.5 am. -She. Since being appointed in May 2022, she hasn’t hesitated to do so. Think, for example, of Marlène Schiappa who posed recently, without bothering to notify the cabinet of Borne, in a Playboy. The Prime Minister personally called her to tell her that “it [was] not appropriate”.
Ending the visit to the exhibition, Jeanine Koch confides in her host “all the admiration” that she has for him and notes that “the so-called strong sex is not the one we believe”. “We’re still not going to let anyone walk all over you!” » the tenant of Matignon replies tit for tat. Any allusion to the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who is openly eyeing his post, would not be accidental…
To prove, to those who still doubted it, that she really wants to stay at Matignon, Elisabeth Borne has also recently beefed up her communication team. Ségolène Redon, from the cabinet of Olivier Véran, has just been appointed head of the communication department in place of a close adviser to the Prime Minister, Hélène Hamelle – she was already in the communication team of Borne then Minister of Labor – promoted to “Special Advisor”.
In order to assert herself as leader of the majority, she also met the presidents of the two allied Renaissance parties, Édouard Philippe (Horizons) in Le Havre and François Bayrou (MoDem) in Pau. “She is preparing the ground because she knows that the start of the school year will be very turbulent,” it is said in her entourage.
Unless it’s a question of the other main deadlines for the start of the new school year: Education, the budget, the immigration bill… For now, Elisabeth Borne is allowing herself a few – short – holidays in the south of France . She planned to walk and read; take your time, in short, before a hectic return to school. The calm before other storms.
