François Bayrou's general policy speech: “It's Macronism without the arrogance”, deciphers political scientist Michel Crespy

On January 14, 2025, the Prime Minister delivered his general policy speech. Analysis with political scientist Michel Crespy.

How do you read this general policy speech ?

It's Macronism without the arrogance. That is to say, he dodged everything that posed a serious problem. He explained that the debt had to be reduced, but didn't say a word about the means to do so. He only specified that he would not tax the large French multinationals.

And on pensions, he invented this audit by the Court of Auditors and this conference with the unions. Knowing that they are divided and that it will be complicated not to worsen the deficit of the pension funds. But by opening a site, he found a semantic detour and postponed this difficulty until later in acceptable forms.

Above all, he saved time…

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Undoubtedly. Time to pass the budget, as much as possible, on which he said nothing at all. On immigration, which is a red rag of the RN, he said nothing either. Afterwards, he announced a certain number of relatively popular things, giving everyone a pat on the back. On education, on health or even housing, there are a whole bunch of measures, with this desire not to upset anyone.

There are announcements in the form of declarations of intent that are not expensive, a priori, and will please a certain number of people. So, I think that it was a fairly clever speech that, moreover, was delivered in a tone of sincerity. He stammered several times, he made a lot of slips of the tongue. There were themes that came and went, it seemed a bit messy, which gave the impression that he was speaking from the heart. I think he was, in fact.

He zigzagged between the problems, while saying interesting things at times, about artificial intelligence, about debureaucratization, with which one can only agree. But anyone could have said them. It is a speech without awkwardness, it will not shock anyone and it allows him to pass a first reef and gain fifteen days.

What are the prospects, now ? Can he avoid a censure ?

His problem is that he does not have a majority. It is always the same difficulty. But I never thought that this speech would be a decisive moment.

The decisive moment will be the vote on the budget at the end of the month. At that time, he will have to show the hidden cards. It is like poker. And that is when there will or will not be censorship.

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