François Bayrou is finally out of purgatory. At the age of 73, the centrist MoDem party's leader, who was appointed prime minister by Emmanuel Macron on Friday, December 13, has not reached the supreme consecration he has always dreamed of – the presidency – but the next best thing. "Destiny has touched him with its wing," said his friend Jean-Louis Bourlanges, a MoDem former MP and a longtime supporter.

To say that it was not an easy choice would be an understatement. It took an "earthquake," the June 9 dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale, and a political cataclysm six months later, the fall of Michel Barnier's government, for Bayrou, one of Macron's first political allies, to finally hold the reins of government. Right up until the end, his supporters feared an unfavorable scenario. The president first called Bayrou to warn him that he would not be appointed prime minister. They then met at length at the Elysée, and Macron changed his mind, faced with the possibility of his main ally turning away from him.

This time, however, the planets have aligned to pave the way for Bayrou. After the parliamentary elections last summer, Bayrou coolly analyzed that the first prime minister of the new legislature, no matter who it may be, would be very quickly toppled, given the absence of an agreement between parliamentary groups divided into three main blocs. It would however, he believed, be difficult to bring down the second, due to public opinion.

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