2023-09-13 19:10:00
DISPATCH — Between the start of the political school year and the publication of his autobiographical work “Des places qui dit” (JC Lattès), Édouard Philippe is on everyone’s minds this Wednesday, September 13. Following a series of media interviews, he took the opportunity to lay the groundwork for his candidacy for 2027.
Emmanuel Macron made no secret of it: “He’s a friend,” he said. The former Prime Minister also fully accepts it: “I have similarities with the President of the Republic”, but “I am not totally identical to him”. Media presence and political connections, Philippe has everything to face Marine Le Pen in 2027.
The presidential election is still far away, but he thinks about it and doesn’t hide it. “I have a fairly clear idea, yes, of how, when it comes to me, things could happen,” he told France Inter. And if this were to go well, he would already know what to do!
First, he would like to stop the “collapse” of the education system, a subject that is close to his heart because his parents are teachers. As reported by AFP, he wants to “put the emphasis on small classes” and “assume that the goal of the school is also excellence”. Castigating the former socialist minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who according to him “favored the private sector”, he intends to reconnect with “republican elitism” which “pulls everyone to the highest”. He regrets that the issue is “always approached from small angles” such as teachers’ salaries or uniforms. Even secularism is not really the subject, because “it would be ridiculous if we thought that the problem with school was the abaya”.
Actually, Islam is another problem. “Increasingly practiced in France”, this religion is, according to him, partly “driven by obscurantist aspirations, which advocate a literal reading of the sacred text (and) a totally rigorous practice”. A puritanism is “radically contrary to the way in which we envisage common life in our Republic”, and it creates a problem which the law of 1905 “is perhaps not able to deal with”.
Despite the separation of churches and state, “the question of a specific organization of Islam will be raised”, predicts Mr. Philippe, anticipating a debate on “a form of concordat” while calling for “return to fundamentals of secularism” and to “fight fiercely to preserve the current framework”.
On the subject of immigration, he welcomes Darmanin’s efforts and his bill, which he considers to be “a very good starting point”.
Finally, on pensions, he is on the same wavelength as Macron: “Because reality, at some point, is there”.
In short, he is “not afraid to express (his) positions, including when they are not popular”.
As a result, he is relatively popular on the right, but still hated by his former party, which does not forgive his rallying to Emmanuel Macron in 2017. “He is the heir” of the head of state, says Eric Ciotti of him, when Olivier Marleix judges that he embodies “the worst of Macronism”.
#Heir #State #Édouard #Philippe #begins #race