The Divided Path: Olivier Marleix’s Struggle with Hatred and Pragmatism

What does happiness come from? This August 30, 2023, Olivier Marleix’s eyes shine when reading the newspaper L’Opinion. The boss of the Les Républicains (LR) deputies learns from an article that Emmanuel Macron prefers to exchange with Éric Ciotti than with him. The elected representative of Eure-et-Loir can start his day with a light mind. Being criticized by your worst enemy, what a delight!

It’s like that. Olivier Marleix hates Emmanuel Macron. The less he meets him, the better he is. Their last meeting dates back to June 19, 2019. The MP is at the Elysée for a tribute to Georges Pompidou, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his election. “Ah, here you are!”, says the head of state. “Mr. President, I am here for Georges Pompidou.” That’s all. We are back under the old Regime, when Marie Antoinette agrees to send a cold word to her rival the Countess du Barry, favorite of Louis XV: “There are a lot of people at Versailles today…”

Profiles at the antipodes

The relative majority has created bridges between Macronie and the right. Olivier Marleix rarely borrows them. He limits his exchanges with ministers, has never responded to requests from Gérald Darmanin and keeps in mind the “betrayal” of Edouard Philippe in 2017. The man has barely established a relationship of trust with Elisabeth Borne. The Prime Minister, rigorous and austere, is not very “New World”. She clearly observed this dichotomy. A close friend of the president is tearing his hair out: “I don’t know why he is so angry with him.”

The right also wonders: “Macron is for him the devil incarnate”, he demonstrates a “primary anti-macronist”, his “hatred is visceral”… Olivier Marleix assumes in front of his troops his aversion for the president of the Republic. We no longer count his ferocious charges in group meetings. Far from the cold tone of LR president Éric Ciotti and his Senate counterpart Bruno Retailleau.

Macron-Marleix. The first is a seducer, the second a touchy one. The head of state has experienced a meteoric rise and exploded the right-left divide. The parliamentarian, who held a series of local mandates before entering the Assembly, is the product of a bipartisan system. One is urban, the other rural. “Marleix looks at Macron like a peasant from Cantal would look at a guy arriving in a Rolls-Royce in the mud,” summarizes LR vice-president Julien Aubert. The animosity would be imbued with “irrationality”, point out several elected officials, risking psychologizing analyses.

The divide is also ideological. Olivier Marleix, a sovereignist attached to the protection of industry, has little taste for Macron-style liberalism. Did he not invite the seguinist Henri Guaino during the LR parliamentary days? He portrays the president as an apostle of happy globalization and crony capitalism. Listening to him, the head of state is closer to Gordon Gekko – the greedy financier of the film Wall Street – as a defender of the strategist State.

“Mixture of Rastignac and Bel-Ami”

In 2019, Olivier Marleix took legal action to investigate the circumstances of the sale of Alstom’s energy division to the American General Electric in 2014, questioning the role played by Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of the Economy . He then puts forward the hypothesis of a “corruption pact” for the benefit of the tenant of Bercy. “Macron is about opening up to the big market, while ensuring social peace with social minimums, he confides. He is the last president of the 90s. The French thought they were buying a modern man, they had the cheesiest president possible.” And don’t talk to him about his personality! The shy Marleix opens up very quickly. When questioned, the MP immersed himself in reading the Gordian Knot, political testament of Georges Pompidou. The normalien warns against the Republic of “engineers and technocrats”. The application to the Macron case is less solemn. “He lacks the knowledge of men. It’s a mixture of Rastignac and Bel-Ami who has succeeded. It’s marketing, he has no conviction about anything.”

His account is good. There’s just one small problem. Olivier Marleix is ​​the president of the LR group in the National Assembly. Its 62 deputies are the pivotal force of Parliament, thanks to the relative majority. Olivier Marleix hates this word, but the right is indeed the “partner” of the executive. Here is the anti-macronist forced to dance with his opponent. “Before I could be a stupid and mean opponent. Now I am forced to be a mean, but intelligent opponent,” he sums up with a smile. We will refrain from insulting the MP’s intellect. But the man was the rebellious type during the first five-year term. He opposes the vaccination pass in the middle of the presidential election, to the great dismay of Valérie Pécresse. He campaigned against the privatization of Aéroports de Paris alongside the left, despite the opposition of Christian Jacob, then president of LR.

Aurélien Pradié has not forgotten this episode. In the midst of the pension crisis, the MP for Lot defends the vote on the Liot group’s motion of censure to his boss: “You have exactly the same arguments as Abad and Jacob at the time! They were already saying that we cannot could sign alongside the communists!” Yes but no. Olivier Marleix, sensitive to the state of public finances, approves the reform. He doesn’t want to bring down the government. Consistency comes at this price. “He’s a straight guy, even if he must sometimes have pain in his adductors,” smiles Manche MP Philippe Gosselin. A few hours before resorting to 49.3, he informed the executive that too many LR deputies were reluctant to vote for the text.

Between two fires

On March 18, two days before the censure vote, he lamented: “On Monday, I will be the most hated guy in France. I will appear like the guy who saves the government even though God knows I don’t like Macron.” He saves him in his own way. From the podium, he denounced the motion of censure but immediately launched into a long tirade against the president’s “narcissistic exercise of power”. Olivier Marleix, at war with himself?

Here is our man caught in the crossfire. Supporters of increased collaboration with the executive reproach him for his virulence towards the head of state as well as his spontaneous criticism of each new government project. In June, he pleaded for an abstention from LR deputies during the examination of the military programming law. Alas, he had to vote in favor of the text after being outvoted.

Some “rebellious” people, however, accuse him of betraying his convictions by collaborating with a power he abhors. “Marleix is ​​held by Ciotti and has no room for political maneuver, confides one of them. I see him like a cork floating on water. To keep his job and keep his position, he must reconcile and give pledges.” Too anti-Macron or not enough. Heads I win, tails you lose. An executive sums up his private dilemma: “Being accused of being Macron’s best friend is for him the worst insult to suffer.”

Olivier Marleix intends to free himself from this infamy during the examination of the immigration bill. At the end of May, he gave a cross-interview to JDD with Éric Ciotti and Bruno Retailleau to unveil the right’s counter-project. He warns: “I will table a motion of censure if the government tries to pass a lax text through 49.3.” Eric Ciotti ticks. He was not warned of this announcement and does not appreciate being faced with a fait accompli. Laurent Wauquiez was also unaware of this approach. The putative LR candidate in 2027 explains it with Olivier Marleix. They agree: yes, the nuclear threat can be launched on fundamental issues for the right.

“Ciotti is more political”

It’s all about tone. Olivier Marleix brandishes the threat of censorship, Éric Ciotti prefers not to reveal his cards. The president of LR knows that the deputy for Eure-et-Loir must take into account the balance of his group and speak to his radical fringe. The southerner is focused on the 2024 European elections and wants to win part of the Macronist electorate. And then, the two elected officials are not made of the same wood. “Ciotti is more political, Marleix has a fixation on Macron,” slips a deputy. Him again !

Can we combine hatred and pragmatism? Olivier Marleix tries. The president of the LR group is not obsessed with the idea of ​​bringing down the government. He knows how dangerous any legislative elections would be for his camp, which has barely recovered from the Valérie Pécresse debacle. The right would have difficulty imposing itself against the three blocs and could lose its status as arbiter in the Assembly. “We have no other way than to chomp at the bit, telling ourselves that after the Olympic Games, the presidential campaign will begin,” he admits.

An LR hierarch analyzes: “Even if you hate someone, you have to think about your own survival. If we go back to 40 and he loses his position as group president, all of this will have been for nothing. temperate.” Perhaps Olivier Marleix is ​​a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained. After obtaining the release of a couple of slaves, a bounty hunter kills the odious owner of the plantation, although surrounded by his bodyguards. “I couldn’t resist,” he apologizes, smirking. He is shot dead in a second. Sometimes it’s better to avoid these little moments of happiness.