His methods, considered authoritarian, had earned him a number of enemies, but it was ultimately Omicron who risked overthrowing Jean-Michel Blanquer. With an aggravating factor: a vacation in Ibiza.
In the new issue of Paris Match, Caroline Fontaine and Bruno Jeudy tell us how Jean-Michel Blanquer went from “darling” of the president to “ball” of the government of Jean Castex. At the front for two years of health crisis, the Minister of National Education felt he had carried out the presidential mission: to keep the school open whatever the cost, even if, for that, he had sometimes had to beat “with bare hands”, according to his expression, in particular in the spring of 2020 during the first deconfinement, when Édouard Philippe refused to do so. The Omicron wave made him stumble A situation that he saw between “rage” and “injustice”, so great is his feeling of not having been unworthy.
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“You will say that we are together for a very long time”
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He now has the feeling of becoming the scapegoat for all the frustrations accumulated in two years of Covid. “Lassitude and dissatisfaction linked to the virus have crystallized on the subject of the constraints weighing on the school, and therefore on me”, he confides to Paris Match. He has the unpleasant impression of having been caught “between a rock and a hard place”. In other words, to be forced to take health decisions that he does not control. He emerges weakened from this sequence. “He was struck by lightning”, even confides one of his colleagues to Paris Match. Already in turmoil, the minister was overtaken last Monday by a new controversy. The Mediapart site has revealed that Jean-Michel Blanquer gave, from Ibiza to the Balearic Islands, the controversial interview with “Parisien” where he announced a few hours before the start of the school year the protocol applicable in schools. Nothing illegal of course, a Minister of Education is entitled to vacation. According to the “Parisien”, he would also have married discreetly and in a small committee with the journalist Anna Cabana. When asked the question, Blanquer does not confirm and adds: “If you are asked, you will say that we are together for a very long time.”
Find our great story in issue 3794 of Paris Match.
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