Leaving Place Beauvau at the end of September, Gérald Darmanin’s entourage had fun: “They took us for very right-wing types; With the new team we will pass for Trotskyists. » Six weeks after his appointment, the new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, imposed a change of tone in any case. “As he was very active in the ideological renewal of the right, his words are much more political”analyzes Bruno Cautres, CNRS researcher at the Sciences Po Political Research Center (Cevipof) and professor at Sciences Po. “notches” clear : “When he says that immigration is not an opportunity for France, he allows himself to go much further than Gérald Darmanin. »
During the more than four years he spent at the Ministry of the Interior, Darmanin had time to perfect his trademark and his speeches in which, between two homemade acronyms and acronyms, he voluntarily invoked popular common sense and apocryphal quotes such as “as my grandmother.” said.” The police, flattered by the imitation of an apparently accessible minister, were ecstatic. With Bruno Retailleau, the speech is more of a homily, peppered with literary references that come directly from the “world before.”
On October 25, at the Toulouse police academy, where the young blue helmets recently graduated from the 271stmy promotion, is not afraid of excess of lyricism: joining the ranks of the forces of order, the minister harangues, is “respond to a vocation”, because “Nothing is more beautiful when the union of hearts sublimates the esprit de corps”. “It is in ignorance that evil always arises.”proclaimed three weeks before, on the occasion of the tribute paid to the victims of the Islamist attack perpetrated against officials of the Paris Police Prefecture, in 2019. In other places, he summoned the spirits of Marshal Foch or Charles Péguy, as during the Farewell ceremony for former director general of the national police Frédéric Veaux, on September 26.
Focus changes
Brice Hortefeux, who rubbed shoulders with both men, sees the new minister’s general attitude and ideological markers as proof of his “beliefs and [de] your determination”, “and we need it, he assures, because it really is on fire everywhere”when his predecessor rather demonstrated capabilities to “flexibility and [à] ability “ – not necessarily praise, in the mouth of former Interior Minister Sarkozy (2009-2011).
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