"The President of the Republic never reframes the Prime Minister in the Council of Ministers," assured the Elysee to AFP, to minimize this new dissonance between the two heads of the executive while speculation is rife on a future government reshuffle.

And yet his words, reported by participants, can appear as a clarification.

"The fight against the far right no longer involves moral arguments," pleaded the head of state. According to him, "we must discredit" the RN "by the substance and inconsistencies", "by the concrete", rather than by "moral postures" or "words of the 90s that no longer work".

"You will not be able to make millions of French people who voted for the far right believe that they are fascists," he said.

Macron came as exchanges focused on Sunday's local elections in Spain, where the far-right has emerged as the third political force and could govern with the right in many regions.

If he did not refer to it directly, they intervene just after the interview broadcast Sunday by Radio J, in which Elisabeth Borne attacked the RN.

"You must not trivialize your ideas, your ideas are always the same. So now, the National Rally is putting the forms, but I continue to think that it is a dangerous ideology, "said the head of government.

"Incompetence" and "amateurism"

She said the party was "heir" to Philippe Pétain, head of the Vichy regime who collaborated with Nazi Germany, and warned that a victory for Marine Le Pen in the 2027 presidential election was "a real threat".

These criticisms, denounced as "infamous and unworthy" by the boss of the RN deputies, have been variously appreciated within Macronia.

"Booster shots are always useful," Renaissance MP Marc Ferracci told reporters on Tuesday. "Now there are other ways to fight" the far right, including noting the "incompetence" and "amateurism" of its proposals, he added.

Not everyone around the Council of Ministers table saw Emmanuel Macron's remarks as a "frontal attack" on Elisabeth Borne. "We have a lack of arguments" to counter the RN, said a government source, deploring the use of "the same arguments as in 2002", when Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front, had for the first time led his camp in the second round of the presidential election.

The Head of State had believed in the past that the best way to push back the far right was to achieve concrete results.

"Marine Le Pen will come to power" if we do not know how to respond to the country's challenges and if we install a habit of lying or denial of reality," he said at the end of April in Le Parisien. "If we manage to win the site of reindustrialization, we will get people out of despair, misery and anger. If we manage to win the site of ecology, order, the fight for our public services, we will have people who will return to the republican field," he said.

This apparent divergence on the best way to counter the far right comes as Emmanuel Macron and Elisabeth Borne have already had contradictory messages on the attitude to adopt towards the unions after the adoption of the pension reform.

It occurs especially in the middle of the "hundred days" decreed by the president to revive his five-year term. He promised to draw up an assessment on 14th July seeming to concede only a reprieve to his Prime Minister, to whom he only renewed his confidence with lip service.

After the Council of Ministers, they had lunch together at the Elysee, for their weekly tête-à-tête.

© 2023 AFP