When France suffocates, when asphalt melts, when cicadas file sick leave, one man remains standing. Well… dozing but in vertical position. This man is François Bayrou, strategic actor of republican inaction, craftsman of sustainable immobilism, certified low-carbon. A man who has made the status quo an Olympic discipline, waiting an art of living, and nothingness a model of integrated management.
While the country demands a vision, he offers… a coffee break. A suspension of movement, but without the poetry. A fundamental slowdown that borders on civic coma. A governmental tempo worthy of a broken escalator. In short, we’re moving backward, but without realizing it. It’s autopilot without destination, a form of administrative GPS on loop, always “recalculating the route.” Like an unplugged coffee maker we keep watching, hoping it will heat up. Or like a minister in an action seminar since 1997, but who still hasn’t found the switch.
In technocratic language, this is called deferred inertia governance with integrated back-pedaling. Or, for intimates of the high administration, a contemplative resilience model with delayed impulses, equipped with a non-interactive participatory consultation interface and a deferred action simulation module. In premium version, it’s called: “variable latency leadership.” In reality, it’s nothing. But a calibrated nothing, pixelated, ventilated, printed in three copies on recycled paper, then validated by the Interministerial Commission for Harmonized Slowness. A nothing so perfectly executed that it received the ISO 9000 label for efficient standstill. A masterpiece of strategic floating, stamped “non-decision compliant with institutional floating objectives,” with retirement point bonuses for performance in aggravated inertia.
We must recognize our Prime Minister’s exceptional consistency in operational neutrality. Not one word higher than another. Not one idea out of place. Exemplary rectitude in stagnation. A verticality of wait-and-see. A posture of dormant vigilance that borders on asceticism. At this level, it’s no longer prudence, it’s sculpture on absence.
He masters the art of active non-action. Each silence is calibrated, each immobility is a strategic choice validated by the High Committee for Responsibility Avoidance. Moreover, he no longer decides, he proceeds to feasibility assessments of decisional silence. He doesn’t contemplate, he temporizes in an anticipatory manner. Everything is in the syntax. Nothing in reality. But a well-turned nothing.
We might have believed, in a flash of temerity, that he would crack and produce a “Heatwave 2050” plan or a “Grenelle of Citizen Perspiration.” But no. That would be too disruptive. Too risky. An initiative could lead to… a reaction. That would be chaos. And then it would involve doing something. But doing means taking sides. And taking sides means already beginning to exist politically. Unacceptable.
So he applies his personal plan of performative sobriety: don’t stir, don’t respond, externalize national destiny to meteorological chance and the clemency of fate. A detachment so profound that it makes Buddhist letting-go look like a nervous breakdown.
And there, miracle! He spoke. Or rather, he let escape a vocal vibration without apparent intention, a sort of pre-recorded diplomatic borborygm. About Boualem Sansal, writer imprisoned by the Algerian regime, our Prime Minister activated his minimalist reaction protocol: he “hopes.” Yes, hopes. Like hoping it rains on a forest fire. Admirable verb, used here in its degreased version, without content, without effect, without backbone. A mirage-word. A political placebo. A simulation of humanity in a three-piece suit. In short, a masterpiece of communication by cognitive evaporation.
Hope is beautiful. It’s very compatible with nothingness. It costs nothing, changes nothing, and allows one to appear to be there while being elsewhere.
He doesn’t demand, he doesn’t require, he hopes. In diplomatic terms: he implements a non-binding wish protocol. An architecture of vague intention, without deliverables, nor schedule, nor impact requirement.
He doesn’t lead, he operates a silent compliance with contemplative governance 3.0 standards. He doesn’t speak, he generates discursive flows with low semantic content, validated by the National Agency for Strategic Fog. He doesn’t pretend to act, he optimizes latency as a systemic regulation tool. He valorizes invisibility as a lever for low-intensity institutional efficiency. He theorizes inaction as a regenerative matrix of sustainable political balance. A sort of civil service yoga, but in lying position, on an interministerial conference mat, between two crisis naps.
Everything is blurry, but it’s intentional. Everything is slow, but methodical. Everything is absurd, but labeled Republic. Even his hesitations are certified by the sustainable silence steering committee.
It would be time for him to leave. To uninstall himself. To operate an operational withdrawal with high symbolic impact. To Betharram, why not, where he could continue his mission of ethical slowness in a controlled ecosystem. Perhaps we could even create a Chair of Applied Inertia there, in partnership with Sciences Po and National Weather.
And if President Macron could accompany him in this approach of executive presence reconfiguration, it would be perfect. The opportunity to open a transition cycle toward minimal footprint governance, or even totally virtual. A holographic government, in sum, where everything is decided elsewhere, and especially, never.
But meanwhile, citizens, take example: stay hydrated, avoid initiatives, suspend any inclination toward movement or structured thought. And if someone asks you to do something, respond calmly: “I’m in immobile piloting phase, like François.”
Because that’s perhaps what has become our only collective compass: waiting, limp hope, thermally soothed management of emptiness. We have become a country governed by absence messages, piloted by delegation to the zeitgeist, with a national software running in background task with no one left in front of the screen.
So the real question is perhaps not: “until when Bayrou?” But: “until when this shadow theater where everyone pretends someone is still at the controls?” A bureaucratic opera without music, where curtains no longer rise, where actors no longer learn their lines, but where spotlights remain on, as if to give the illusion that the show continues.
The machine runs idle, but runs nonetheless. The State increasingly resembles a computer frozen on a screensaver, displaying a tricolor flag as wallpaper. Meanwhile, citizens wait in the waiting room of a future they’re promised without ever having the door opened for them. We recycle talking points, resurrect dead acronyms, appoint commissions whose only merit is not to disturb too much.
What’s Ubuesque isn’t that nothing works anymore, it’s that everything seems designed so that nothing can possibly work. And yet, we play our role, with discipline: faithful spectators of a series whose script has been lost since season 2. And the absurd thing is that the more emptiness settles in, the more we pretend to draw meaning from it.
That’s perhaps the real French drama: having confused stability with immobilism, continuity with non-existence, and temperance with abdication.