“Do you know Thionville? It’s very pretty, Thionville. » In this mid-March, Edouard Philippe has just returned from the small town of Moselle, delighted. The mayor of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) has just set up a local committee there for his young party, Horizons. In the old “iron metropolis”the welcome was warm for the one who was presented, in front of a full house, as “the favorite political personality of the French”. The former member of the Les Républicains (LR) party who claims to be “loyal but free” towards Emmanuel Macron has since been asked to devote his travels to the re-election of the head of state before serving his personal ambitions.
Like the macronists, Le Havre already has his eyes riveted on the legislative elections scheduled for June 12 and 19 and is preparing his weapons so that his right-wing party, the presidential stable of the city councilor for 2027, imposes itself within a devastated political landscape. Emmanuel Macron does not ignore it. If the tenant of the Elysée, whose sounding advance for the ballot is eroding week after week, has formally prohibited parliamentarians from “playing the legislative elections before the presidential election”everyone thinks about their future.
The president knows that the day after his possible re-election, a succession battle will be triggered. But he intends to delay it as much as possible. For that, it needs a majority that is as solid as it is docile. If the idea of dissolving the Assembly the day after a possible victory on April 24, in order to take advantage of the dynamics of the presidential election to elect a maximum of deputies, seems, for the time being, ruled out, the leader of the State intends to secure its majority. “The president does not want a blue horizon room”sums up a close friend of the Head of State, referring to the party of the mayor of Le Havre.
Moderate Right Rallyer
Informal discussions have begun between the former Prime Minister and the one to whom Emmanuel Macron has entrusted the management of the investitures: the President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand. The former socialist hopes for no less than 347 deputies, the current number of elected members of the majority, made up of the three groups La République en Marche (LRM), the MoDem – which could merge – and Agir, a right-wing current of Macronia. Only will return to Edouard Philippe “the constituencies of conquest”the other 227 occupied by opposition MPs.
But the former Prime Minister could rebel. “I don’t want to be a minister. I don’t want to go to the Assembly. I’m not asking for anything. But I don’t want to be bothered, since it’s a fashionable term”he had dropped on a daily basis L’Opinion, on January 16, following the presidential veto against the merger between his party and Agir.
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