“Where is Lecornu? » Gérald Darmanin looks for his friend Sébastien Lecornu. On September 29, in Tourcoing (North), where he returns to school, the former Minister of the Interior slides a ball on the petanque court, before giving way to his former government colleagues, Gabriel Attal and Agnès Pannier-Runacher. . “And Lecornu? Don’t you play, Lecornu? »repeat. Dressed like a priest – black turtleneck, black velvet trousers, tweed jacket – the person, who voluntarily stays away from the cameras, is invisible. While 700 French blue helmets, inserted in the UNIFIL force on the border between Israel and Lebanon, are trapped under the fire of the Israeli army incursions, the Minister of Defense does not want to appear, on a Sunday, at a bowling alley.
Prudence and discretion are the two keys to his exceptional longevity in government. The youngest parliamentary assistant (in 2005, at 19 years old), the youngest ministerial advisor (in the cabinet of Bruno Le Maire, in 2008), elected in 2015 as the youngest president of the Eure departmental council and then one of the youngest in the government. of Edouard Philippe, is, at 38 years old, the only surviving minister, although he is almost unknown to the French. “A feat and an enigma”observes one of his former colleagues, who wonders about the meteoric rise of this adoptive Macronist who only met with the president when he was appointed Secretary of State for Ecology, on the day of the first Council of Ministers, in 2017. Seven years later, it was Emmanuel Macron himself who insisted on keeping it in defense, against the advice of Michel Barnier, who wanted to renew the faces.
Sébastien Lecornu, who published Towards war? (Plon, 288 p., 20 euros), he joined the inner circle of power a long time ago. Associated with most political conclaves, he is a pillar of the “Elysée boys club” – the other name of the Court, in Macronian –, where political coups are plotted over a venison stew, while competing in imitations or Michel replicas. Audiard. The Macron couple regularly invites the Minister of Defense to a dinner at the end of August in Brégançon (Var). Or to have a whiskey at night in the Elysée, where he meets his accomplices Thierry Solère and Gérald Darmanin, two other deserters from the right, former masters in the art of distracting their followers. “Rais”. “He chose a niche: whispering in the monarch’s ear”observes a Macronist who praises his absolute ” loyalty “.
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