In 2006, Jean-François Copé published a book entitled “Promis, j’arrête la langue de bois”. The least we can say, upon reading his latest book, is that the public commitment made at the time has been kept. Not surprising, even if public opinion has long believed that politicians are incapable of it, because knowing Jean-François Copé for more than twenty-five years, having worked with him when I was Prime Minister, I can assure readers that the mayor of Meaux is not one to mince his words.
The political world is full of figures wielding poisoned praise, hypocritical encouragement, and intellectual complacency. Copé, on the other hand, prefers to speak frankly, even if it ruffles some feathers, but always face-to-face, with a sense of humor and sometimes harsh irony. None of this precludes respect and kindness, but truth and conviction come first. And if the truth can be painful, there is nothing better to solve problems.
This demand for truth is found in his latest book, “Quand les populistes trahissent le peuple”. And it hits hard. Page after page, Jean-François Copé dismantles the methods of modern charlatanism, made up of falsehoods, extreme simplifications, dubious historical references, and cynicism for selfish interests, expressed politically in populism. This charlatanism is amplified by the multiplier effect of social networks, bordering on obscurantism, be it scientific, religious, or political. However, as I have tried to demonstrate in another book, all of this has a cost, “the price of our lies”, or rather a cost: financial (always), political, democratic, and unfortunately sometimes human.
If there is one place in politics where you cannot cheat, it is in a town hall. The best antidote to lies is reality. And this reality, Jean-François Copé knows it well as mayor of Meaux, a city with a rich historical past, but also with 40% social housing and 27 different nationalities. A city he has significantly transformed, beautified, and secured, in which, for some reason, he has been brilliantly re-elected since 1995. If there is one place in politics where you cannot cheat, it is in a town hall.
So at least as much credit can be given to what Jean-François Copé writes, especially regarding our Muslim compatriots. Compatriots who, under populism, are either instrumentalized or stigmatized, but who are never mentioned other than by referring them back to their origins or a religion with which many have contrasting relationships. Many talk about “Muslims” as a uniform block; generally on television sets; fewer are those who talk “with” Muslims; most of the time, on the ground.
Like Jean-François Copé, like thousands of mayors, when I engage with Muslim voters, they do not talk to me about religion or the situation in Gaza, as dramatic as it may be, but about purchasing power, schooling, security, health. And most of the time, these voters want the same things we want: order, work, seriousness, a good education for their children. One wonders why they would want anything else. Jean-François Copé thus refutes, and it is rare enough to emphasize it, the political confinement that populism imposes on our Muslim compatriots.
And willing to scratch a little, Copé proposes a list of the seven deadly sins against reality, made up of intellectual renunciations, electoral conveniences, collective myopias that lead to mistakes in security, education, public finances, adaptation to technological challenges, or European weakness. The call for lucidity is essential, as is the refutation of the populist mirages in America, Argentina, and Italy. Wanting to break with “the abdication of pedagogy,” Copé proposes a clear line and a simple method.
The political line takes the form of a plea against all attempts or temptations of more or less assumed alliances, of rapprochements or more or less implicit complicity with the National Rally and its satellites. It is the Gaullist and Chiracian heritage that it is good to recall and defend. He who was vilified for formulating the idea of a “decomplexed right” thus asserts himself, in all coherence, as one of the staunchest opponents to any attempt at uniting the right. And the equality he forcefully formulates between the far right and LFI should invite the Republican left to the same demand from its side.
The prescription of the good Dr. Copé, in the form of a method, is based on a blend of freedom, responsibility, work, and seriousness. Jean-François Copé is a man of the right. He doesn’t lie to himself. And he doesn’t try to compromise with those who are unsure of what they think. Democracy is based on the idea of a public debate to enlighten choices. By denouncing the betrayal of the people by populists and proposing milestones on the path to French recovery, Jean-François Copé is doing useful work. And that, as a great reader said, “it can’t hurt!”
