There was a spectacular, almost novelistic character to the meeting between President Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of France's political parties on Wednesday. In the "princes' salon" of a former royal abbey, the 12-hour talks lasted well into the night, while phones were locked away at the entrance. But what will remain of this meeting in Saint-Denis, just north of Paris? Clearly, it was first and foremost a performance. From La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) to the Rassemblement National (RN, far right), all those invited came and stayed until 3:15 am, bowing to the president's schedule. Some even praised the quality of conversation, far removed from the raucousness of a fragmented and radicalized Parliament. For Macron, who had failed to calm French society at the end of a self-set "100 days" (which were empty and turbulent, marked by urban riots), this "appeasement-generating" gathering was most welcome, said one of his advisers.
In essence, the meeting was a chemically pure condensation of Macronism. True to what he has always stood for, the president wanted to demonstrate that it's still possible to set aside labels and confining postures, things which, in his view, lead to deadlock and impotence. In the Macron seen on Wednesday, there was a hint of the Macron of 2015, when, as economy minister, he sought to draw lawmakers of all stripes to support his bill for growth and equal economic opportunity. "Attrition warfare becomes mobile warfare," he saidat the time, "Things move, people end up thinking... I've seen debates open up."
Macronism was forged with this conviction that it is possible to transform by finding majorities bill by bill, in the service of a supposed general interest. In Saint-Denis, the goal could not have been as ambitious, but it obeyed the same logic, attempting to defuse political reflexes in order to come up with a shared diagnosis on a number of major subjects. It was an attempt to ward off the impotence threatening the system in an era marked by tragedy and urgency (the return of war, the emancipation of capitalist forces from political power, the rise of populism, the inability to take on the climate crisis). "The idea was not to find lukewarm compromises, but to force everyone out of their established positions and make them face reality, to share the constraints," summarized one presidential adviser on Thursday evening.
Of late, President Macron appeared to have lost political weight and momentum, and even to have been overwhelmed by the summer offensives from potential successors (the impertinent Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, the overactive Education Minister Gabriel Attal). On a tactical level, the Saint-Denis meeting also enabled him to script his ability to remain master of the game, in the position of referee – at least momentarily. This will be the key issue of his second term, he admitted behind closed doors, in response to RN president Jordan Bardella's proposal to change the presidential term to a single seven-year term. "A politician who cannot stand for re-election loses all leverage," retorted Macron, according to L'Express, "The political system is then thinking about what comes next. The limitation to two five-year terms is bullshit, it devalues the president in a second term." LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon pounced, blasting Macron for those words.
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