Elisabeth Borne wants to fight “populists and extremes” by calling for “unity”

2023-08-27 19:02:21

Earlier in the day, Gérald Darmanin said he could not “obviously let Marine Le Pen go irretrievably to power”. Well, it’s Elisabeth Borne’s turn to place herself as a bulwark “against populists and extremes”. During a speech delivered at Gérald Darmanin’s back-to-school meeting in Tourcoing, the Prime Minister called for unity within the majority: “The time ahead of us must be entirely devoted to action and work intense substantive work to produce results” in order to fight “populists and extremes by leaving them their demagogic recipes”. In memory, the Minister of the Interior himself had recently deemed “fairly likely” a victory for Marine Le Pen in 2027.

“Our unity is our strength, we must protect it at all costs, it is the condition for continuing to act and not paving the way to extremes ourselves. This unity, behind the President of the Republic and his project, I care about it, I watch over it and I guarantee it, ”insisted Elisabeth Borne.

“Proud of what has been accomplished over the past six years”

“I really had not planned to spend this last weekend of August in Tourcoing” for this “informal event”, had started the head of government, who only announced on Saturday her arrival in the North while Gérald Darmanin launched a political and media offensive several weeks ago.

If “the question of the far right and its progress in our democracies is at the heart of our reflections”, “we can be proud of what has been accomplished over the past six years”, she argued, listing the duplication of CP and CE1 in priority neighborhoods, the abolition of housing tax, the automatic payment of alimony or the creation of 10,000 additional police and gendarme posts. But we must “remain humble”, “because difficulties persist, and the French are asking us to do more and better”, added Elisabeth Borne.

Gérald Darmanin had gathered this Sunday in Tourcoing a dozen ministers, several dozen parliamentarians from the majority and a few LR, centrist and independent parliamentarians for an afternoon of debate devoted to the “working classes”.