Paris (AFP)

Irritating for the left, the press and part of public opinion, Gérald Darmanin is a "balancing act", the embodiment of the security strategy wanted by Emmanuel Macron to secure the right-wing electorate in view of the 2022 presidential election.

From his appointment last July, the Minister of the Interior did not hide that this was his roadmap.

Like his mentor, Nicolas Sarkozy, he thunders, is always on the move and talks raw or even shocking.

"He wants to put words on things", explains those around him.

There were thus the words "wild" or "thugs", but also sentences punctuated with slang: "the cars", "those who screw up" etc.

"He embodies this popular right," said one of his friends.

With the "global security" law and its article 24 prohibiting the dissemination of images endangering members of the police, Gérald Darmanin threw himself without complex into a "very security" speech, which unleashed his detractors , according to a minister.

"It irritates a lot, but it does not matter to him. He has his political strategy, he continues, he has a temperament that goes with it", underlines to AFP, the political scientist Pascal Perrineau, for whom Gérald Darmanin "sends the elements of language which should help freeze the right-wing electorate in need of a candidate.

Be careful, he said, however, not to go "too far in provocations".

Its image "is tarnished in the press and a section of the population, but at the end of the day what moves a certain political class does not move the French," adds Mr. Perrineau.

- Telescoping -

Brice Teinturier (Ipsos) believes that the minister, in spite of the criticisms of which he is the object, is "not weakened", because he is "useful" to the head of state in his presidential strategy.

Nevertheless, he considers that there is a risk in the medium and long term that the "global security" law and its article 24 become a "sticking plaster" for the majority.

With the consequence of losing the vote of part of the left.

"Gérald Darmanin is a sarkozyst ready to do anything to go up, including telling anything," laments a LREM deputy from the left wing.

This week, the sequence is hardly favorable to the minister with the telescoping between the law "global security" and violence on the part of the police in Paris.

Monday evening first with, Place de la République, the evacuation of a migrant camp under the gaze of the press and then a few days later the broadcast of a video of the beating of a producer.

"Everything gets together and at the end what remains, these are images of violence which are not acceptable and which occur at a time when there is a debate around the images", laments a minister under cover of anonymity.

In both cases, Gérald Darmanin reacted quickly.

For the evacuation of the migrant camp, he tweeted at midnight to express his emotion at "shocking images" and to seize the IGPN ("police force").

The report is expected to be made public in the evening.

Regarding the beaten producer, he asked the Paris police prefect, Didier Lallement, to suspend the three police officers involved.

What was done in the afternoon.

"He walks on his two legs, the right and the left (...) He supports the police but he is also firm towards them. This allows him to get out of this liberticidal angle in which he had been for a few days", underlines Franck Louvrier, former adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy.

"He is on the edge like a balancing act and he works well" he judges.

If for him, Gérald Darmanin is not weakened, this is not the case on the other hand with Didier Lallement: "a Paris police prefect is a fuse. He can have a replacement every Wednesday" (day of the Council of ministers).

A feeling shared by Brice Teinturier for whom the prefect of police is "a subject", given the "accumulation of elements" of police violence.

© 2020 AFP