EStill shocked by the historically low score of Valérie Pécresse in the first round of the presidential election (4.78% of the votes cast), members of the Les Républicains (LR) party appointed a new leader in the hope to climb the slope. The deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes Eric Ciotti, who had arisen a year ago during the primary of the right, was preferred to the president of the senatorial group, Bruno Retailleau. Less than 5,000 votes separate the score of the two men, however, so that the winner, barely elected, called for unity under penalty of seeing the divisions accentuate between the parliamentary groups and the different sensitivities of the party.
LR is still not recovered from the internal wars which undermined it in the aftermath of Nicolas Sarkozy’s defeat in 2012. Nor have its leaders completely severed the umbilical cord with the former President of the Republic who, although marginalized, does not hesitate to disturb the game by encouraging the LR deputies to conclude an agreement in good and due form with the government.
At this stage, the only clear message that emanates from the election of Eric Ciotti is that the old party of the right and the center no longer holds the balance. It moves inexorably to the right in variations that do not completely overlap. The deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes has built his notoriety on a security and anti-immigration discourse assumed. He advocates, among other things, the abolition of jus soli and a major “fiscal counter-shock”.
dangerous game
Bruno Retailleau, in line with François Fillon, embodies a more conservative right on the societal level, and more rigorous on the economic level. The two men nevertheless have in common a desire to take on a “real” right-wing program, breaking with that of the years of government, now considered too lukewarm. At stake, constitutional changes to limit the influence of European law on the conduct of migration policy. Controlling flows has become the number one obsession of a party that is increasingly shrunken on its base, caught between Emmanuel Macron, on the one hand, Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, on the other.
The proclaimed refusal of any agreement with Emmanuel Macron, the conviction shared by Eric Ciotti and Bruno Retailleau that the future now lies on the side of a union of rights, to be built, harbors a real danger. The leaders of LR behave as if they were still the masters of the game, while the electoral weight of the party has melted and the profile of its members has become more radical. Silent on alliances, Eric Ciotti does not openly advocate a rapprochement with Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, but his speech and his proposals too often resemble a copy-paste of those made by his competitors. At this dangerous game, he is certainly not the best armed.
Aware of his lack of notoriety, the new president of LR presented himself, throughout the campaign, as the one who was going to prepare the ground for Laurent Wauquiez, who is trying to establish himself as the future champion of an uninhibited right. The fact that the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region did not want to compete in person for the presidency of LR, however, shows all the fragility of the calculation. The big fear is that the party will register a new electoral dip in the European elections of 2024.
Since the 2012 defeat, LR has failed to rebuild an autonomous, mobilizing and unifying discourse. It is his great failure. Nothing says it will be overcome.