Why 35% of French people cannot name their own prime minister

SEVEN months after their prime minister was appointed in May 2017, fully 35% of the French could not name him accurately in a poll. Next to the hyper-visible President Emmanuel Macron, who hosts global business chiefs at the Palace of Versailles one week and is on the phone every other to Donald Trump, the tall, bearded Edouard Philippe cuts a discreet figure. So much so that he is variously identified in polls as Philippe Edouard, Gérard Philipe (a former actor), or Louis Philippe (a former king). Confusion about Mr Philippe’s name, though, prompts a bigger question: what is the point of him?

France is unusual in having a two-headed executive, devised by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 when the previous parliamentary system had proved unstable. The Fifth Republic’s constitution established a particularly strong executive presidency. But according to precedent the president is meant to stick to big visions and foreign affairs, leaving the prime minister, whom he names, to deal with the grind of daily policymaking. When the president is an energetic, sleeves-rolled-up sort, this division of labour is hard to sustain.

In many ways, the link between Mr Macron and Mr Philippe looks friction-prone. Before the first round of the presidential election in 2017, they had only met three times. The young president was formerly a minister in a Socialist government; the sardonic prime minister belonged to the centre-right Republicans. Mr Macron has a reputation for fiddling with details. In a political thriller he co-wrote, Mr Philippe described Matignon, the prime minister’s office, as “a form of hell”.

There have indeed been moments of confusion. Last summer Mr Macron stole the limelight by summoning lawmakers to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament at Versailles, the day before a major speech by his prime minister. In that address, Mr Philippe announced that some of Mr Macron’s promised tax cuts—notably in the wealth tax and the council tax for modest earners—would be postponed by a year. Days later, after charges of backtracking, Mr Macron decided otherwise.

Against the odds

Yet, over time, the president and prime minister seem to have found a way to make their odd relationship work. On labour reform, for example, Mr Macron laid down the broad rules. Mr Philippe and his labour minister then did the hard slog of negotiations and arbitration, spending their summer in some 100 meetings with union leaders, before unveiling a new labour law last year. On education reform, Mr Macron defined the outline, leaving Mr Philippe and his schools minister to hold ongoing discussions with teachers. Three-fifths of the French think the executive duo have got the balance right, according to a poll in December.

“The main job for a French prime minister is not to upstage the president,” says one observer wryly. Working for a head of state nicknamed “Jupiter”, Mr Philippe does not seem in danger of doing this. He does none of the grand events. When Mr Macron decided to hold a ceremonious and filmed signing of the labour law, White House-style, the prime minister was absent. “Basically, it’s a thankless job,” says somebody close to Mr Philippe. Most French prime ministers leave office drained and politically weakened. Of the 22 politicians who have occupied the job since 1958, only two—Georges Pompidou and Jacques Chirac—have gone on to become president, and neither did so immediately after leaving Matignon.

It may help their improbable bond that Mr Philippe, his friends insist, does not covet Mr Macron’s job. Evicted from his party for jumping ship, he has no parliamentary base of his own, and relies on Mr Macron’s solid centrist majority. An amateur boxer, Mr Philippe confessed to a “panicky fear” when he realised he might be offered the prime ministership. The pair are of the same generation, Mr Philippe being seven years older than his 40-year-old boss. Each man was also formerly close to Michel Rocard, a centre-left Socialist ex-prime minister, whom Mr Philippe backed in his youth before switching to the political right.

The real test of their tie, though, will be over tricky legislation that is now looming, particularly a new immigration bill that was presented to cabinet this week. Many of Mr Macron’s deputies are uneasy about its harsher provisions. Asylum-agency officials have been on strike. Mr Philippe may be about to learn the hard way that the real function of a French prime minister is to let the president take the credit when things go well, and to deal with the trouble when it all goes wrong.