Emmanuel Macron hires Rupert Murdoch's spin Doctor to rewrite the French public

Emmanuel Macron has hired a former advisor to Tony Blair and top spin doctor by Rupert Murdoch as a senior consultant and commissioned him to sell the voters the vision of the French president, in view of the fear of increasing dissatisfaction.

Frédéric Michel joins the Élysée as a special communication and strategy consultant to help communicate the "short, medium and long-term" plan of the French president and the connection between national and international politics, says Le Figaro.

With a view to his political legacy, he is also given the task of "helping him to comply with his election promises ... at a time when the challenges are considerable, from climate change to global geopolitical upheavals and the social flame resistance," it said.

Since France pays billions to limit energy prices, Mr. Macron reports reported on the resurrection of a protest movement in the style of Gilet Jaunes, who plagued his first term.

It is crucial that Mr. Michel, 50, an expert in crisis management that will have a tricky task to take on media work for Mr. Macron, who has no spokesman for the president.

The 44-year-old "Jupiterian" head of state often had a distant and tense relationship with journalists, rarely held press conferences in Germany and selected those who were allowed to approach him. He once said journalists had a hard time processing his "complex" thoughts.

The more sublime approach of Mr. Macron is partly a reaction to the buddy relationship of his socialist predecessor François Hollande to political journalists. The damage that his constant conversations with reporters have caused Mr. Hollande was described in the successful political book "A President Shouldn’t Say That".

While Mr. Macron won the re -election in April, he is faced with a more difficult time to master the media narrative after losing his absolute majority in parliament, with Left and extreme right profits.

He was also criticized nationally and internationally to speak to Vladimir Putin, while other western leaders insist that he should be treated as pariah.

Mr. Michel, who was trained at the Sciences Po in Bordeaux and the London School of Economics, quickly rose in the ranks of New Labor and his left-handed Think tanks and founded the center-left-left-policy network group, chaired by Lord Mandelson.

The public Affairs expert, who also founded his own agency for "Corporate Reputation", was once also close to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and ex-finance minister of France, whose presidential hopes in 2011 were destroyed because of a sex scandal in New York.

He was a British chief lobbyist for Rupert Murdochs News Corp during the application of the company for the satellite television giant British Sky Broadcasting.

as such, he made headlines during the Leveson examination, which examined the ethics and practices of the British press after the telephone hacking scandal of News International

The Leveson examination published a 163-page report, which revealed extensive communications between Mr. Michel and the office of Jeremy Hunt, the then Minister of Culture.

The cozy way of exchange triggered a political storm, since Mr. Hunt should at that time be a neutral referee when deciding whether the controversial BSKYB deal should be referred to the British competition authority. Mr. Hun's special advisor, Adam Hunt, had to resign because of the scandal.

Mr. Michel worked at Lupa Systems, a private investment company founded by Rupert Murdoch's oldest son James. Lupa Systems has invested in the French media company Brut. Mr. Michel is also a board member of the French weekly newspaper Les Inrocks.

le Figaro said that Mr. Macron was influenced by Mr. Michel's international references; He worked in the Middle East, Italy and America. Last year he organized the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, one of the first cultural events that took place after the Covid crisis in the USA.

"It is a big surprise to choose someone who worked in Great Britain, but never in France when Spin Doctor worked because we don't have the same codes," said Bruno Jeudy, political commentator at BFMTV and former editor -in -chief of Paris Match.

he added: "I think he chose Michel because he hangs a lot in his place in history. He wants to keep up with the greatest presidents. How do you describe your last mandate in which there is a risk of disappearing into the media if the race increases for your successor?"

Mr. Macron had tried to fill the decisive position for months after Clément Léonarduzzi, a top strategist and communication consultant, had gone at the beginning of this year.