“The need to speak directly with the French”: Bayrou sells his budget on YouTube

Without a majority and surrounded by his opponents, François Bayrou is picking up the French people in the heat of the summer torpor with the aim of calling them to witness. This Tuesday, at 5 p.m., the Prime Minister will launch, according to our information, a podcast called "FB Direct" and a series of YouTube videos in which he will talk to them about... the infernal 2026 budget , which so many predict will bring down his government.

The first issue will be devoted to the general framework and the need to reduce the country's debt. This will be followed daily by thematic episodes revisiting the difficulties caused by the enormous debt and the solutions he proposes to address them. Starting next week, Internet users will also be able to send him their questions, which he will answer later. In short, the Prime Minister himself is taking care of the after-sales service for the bitter potion he presented in mid-July in an attempt to straighten out the public finances.

"This is such a crucial moment that I feel the need to speak directly with the French people. So that each of them can form their own opinion," François Bayrou confided to Le Parisien. "I don't have the impression that the political class, with a few exceptions, is about to assume this responsibility. But the French, perhaps. And since we have the whole month of August and the beginning of September, we have a period of time that could be useful for such awareness."

A direct communication that he sees as putting into practice his slogan "Never without the French." And which he believes, despite the fall in his ratings in the polls and the unpopularity of the measures presented, is the only way to make public opinion understand the need for this tightening of the screw.

A way of circumventing the political debate, undermined by the grievances of his critical allies and especially by the battering rams of his adversaries, starting with the RN and the PS, which have already promised to censor him. For the man who compares this budget to his "Himalayas," it's a final offensive before entering "the death zone," as the mountaineers say.