Cheese, rum, rillettes, rum, acra, a third glass, and so on: after Emmanuel Macron’s whirlwind visit, Jean Castex was to go around the clock on Saturday at the Salon de l agriculture, a must in the election campaign where he was able to measure his popularity.
Woe to anyone who asks him if this is his first time at the Salon: “Twenty-one times! I counted! When I came here as a student, I felt like I was in my Gers native…”
The fact remains that, appointed to Matignon in July 2020, the visit is his first as Prime Minister, pandemic obliges. A Quercy lamb in his arms, the head of government says he “understands” the farmers.
“With Ukraine, we have a new crisis ahead of us, a health crisis that is not completely over, the philosophy is the same: we will not let down neither the farmers nor the others,” he insists. he after caressing a cow abondance behind the ear, “because you always have to do it where she can’t scratch herself”.
Jean Castex wants to be a specialist, or almost. “We all have a grandfather, or an uncle, or someone in his family who was a farmer in this country,” he slips. At the same time as he summons his “brother-in-law breeder in the Pyrénées-Orientales” stand after stand, once to specify that his farm “is at an altitude of 1,400 m”, another to explain that he “has passed from all-milk to all-meat”.
Very comfortable
First announced in the course of next week, the Prime Minister’s wandering of nearly twelve hours was finally brought forward to the first day of the Salon’s opening. It was a question of catching up with the false leap of the President of the Republic, who was to spend the day there but who resolved to go there only briefly at the time of the milkman.
A consolation prize, Jean Castex? Not so sure. The former mayor of Prades was able to taste his popularity, to be asked for dozens of photos, when he is not applauded by clusters of passers-by along the aisles of the Salon.
In front of pigs, he is challenged by the self-proclaimed “farmer in France the most followed on TikTok”. Tit for tact: “My daughters are TikTok fans!”.
A group of twenty-somethings: “Thank you for coming to see us! We come from Toulouse, we love you! Toulouse in force!” The rugby enthusiast who lives in Matignon teases: “The Stade Toulousain is still a bit, huh… In short, and therefore, we have to hold on!”.
To hold on, like the majority of which he is the leader, six weeks before the first round of the presidential election, while Emmanuel Macron is leading the race in the polls but has still not declared himself a candidate – the Constitutional Council has set the deadline for next Friday.
While the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, devotes himself to taking yet another photo of the head of government with a Breton family, a visitor gives voice: “Mr. Prime Minister, good luck for France and thank you! “
Jean Castex relishes, as much as he allows himself to broaden his discourse beyond the agricultural prism alone. “What’s wrong with the current system is that not everyone who contributes has the right to the same levels of pension, to the same pension, so we have to fix that,” he replies to a young man. .
Jean Castex, responsible for the government’s after-sales service as well as the President of the Republic’s sales representative, takes over a third rum from the Overseas Pavilion. Five minutes earlier, he had agreed to pass on a necklace of shells offered by a Polynesian delegation, all smiles, when the sound system spat out a Caribbean cover of “Capri, it’s over”, biguine version.
Is he afraid of being asked if, in the end, he wouldn’t want to be a candidate himself for the April deadline? He answers with a joke: “Oh, there are still seven days left…”
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