The Elysée Palace's Salle des Fêtes, where journalists had gathered earlier, was empty. President Emmanuel Macron returned to the Salon des Portraits for a nightcap with his ministers and advisers, on this Tuesday, January 16. He had just given a press conference, following a major government reshuffle marked by the January 9 appointment of Gabriel Attal, 34, as prime minister, meant to symbolize a return to the "audacity" of Macron's early days. The reshuffle was also marked by a shift to the right, with the return of many figures who had held ministerial roles under President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012). Macron's bogged-down second term was in urgent need of a new direction.
"It was all right, wasn't it?" inquired Macron. His adviser on historical issues, Bruno Roger-Petit, was jubilant. In a way, the president's press conference, teased as a "rendez-vous with the nation," was his vindication. Macron had just announced the generalization of school uniforms, the return of civics education, and the re-establishment of an ersatz military service, with the development of a program called "universal national service."
Roger-Petit rejoiced from such throwbacks to a vintage France, in the colors of a "1960s Polaroid Kodak" and for which the French are "nostalgic," he said. For months now, the 61-year-old former politics and sports journalist has been arguing that the French people are demanding "conservation" and "regeneration," gripped by a deep sense of "dispossession." France, Roger-Petit believes, wants to "regain control" of its destiny.
The night drew on, and First Lady Brigitte Macron slipped into the Salon des Portraits. She greeted Rachida Dati, the new culture minister, and Eric Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister, whom she has defended at every reshuffle since his appointment in 2020. She too beamed, delighted with the new team surrounding her husband.
It was a triumph of the "Madame Wing," the east wing of the Elysée Palace, home to French first ladies's offices. Brigitte Macron took possession of the wing in 2017 with her two advisers and one of the president's own aides to which she is very close: Bruno Roger-Petit. The former columnist in the business magazine Challenges, who presented the evening news on television 30 years ago, set up his office in the former sacristy, adjacent to the chapel built under Napoleon III, which Charles de Gaulle's wife Yvonne de Gaulle used to frequent assiduously.
It is a strategic position: He is just one flight of stairs away from the Corner Salon, one of the president's two offices; and across the corridor is the Salon des Fougères, where the first lady works. In his office, a photo shows him wedged between the presidential couple, seated between the hollows and bumps of a Paulin sofa, the three of them laughing.
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