In 2011 the Mayor of Antibes talked to us about the principle of moderation. Now he talks to us about... the principle of moderation! “People don’t change so why should I have changed, especially about such an important matter? I believe the principle of moderation is the mother of victories without defeat, winning without the other losing.” The thinking might seem complex but it’s that of a clear, lucid man adept at tackling all sorts of problems with humility. “We need to accept that the person opposite us isn’t our enemy. That there is always some truth in their stand and they can show us a different way of seeing things. And consequently that we can find, not a compromise but how to overcome our differences for the sovereign good.” Which is how his Leonetti Law on the rights of the sick and dying came to be passed unanimously under both a left-wing government, in 2005, and a right-wing one, when it was revised in 2008. And why President Emmanuel Macron recently asked him to continue his work. Of course Leonetti is no longer a minister (of European affairs in the Fillon government) nor, since last June, an MP since he preferred to continue as Mayor of Antibes, a calculated choice that he wholeheartedly defends. “I feel that today’s reality is more tangible in the field than in a national plan that has disappointed. Politics isn’t about selling dreams but about stimulating hopefulness, meaning reasonable collective expectations that will be expressed in concrete terms and relation to, even consultation with, the population. Only then will politics become credible again. But this does depend on Jacobin France one day accepting decentralised power and a regional margin of manoeuvre in implementing decrees and laws, as in other European countries.”
Par Alexandre Benoist
Photo Jean-Michel Sordello
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