“So apparently some people are wondering why I’m not fidgety.” This October 1, 2023, Laurent Wauquiez plays at home. The putative candidate of the Republicans (LR) in 2027 delivers a long political speech in front of nearly 500 young LR activists gathered in Valence (Drôme). The man takes a further step towards the race for the Elysée and praises his “determination”. But there is hardly any mention of France and ideas in the preamble to his speech. The boss of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes defends his strategy of media discretion, which worries part of his camp.
Laurent Wauquiez measures these fears. Man privately projects himself into the long term. His supporters praise his immersion among the French, from which a political project must emerge to halt our “decline” which began “forty years” ago. It depicts a France mired in “impotence”, as under the Fourth Republic. A parallel emerges between his behavior and his dark prophecies. Height, the only attitude that counts! But we have to sell this overhang strategy. In Valencia, he is working on it. Speaking little is obviously not preserving your chances. But help France! Laurent Wauquiez thus criticizes “political schemes which have led our country on the slope of decline for 40 years” and outdated codes which will not get “politics out of the rut”.
“The right is the ham in the middle of the sandwich”
The pretender paints an apocalyptic portrait of the public debate, which legitimizes his discretion. Current policy is said to be “drowned in an ocean of ridiculous vanities”, reduced to “picrocholine polemics” or “feigned indignation”. In an interview with Point, he castigated in the spring “the abysmal collapse in the level of debate” and the “drum of the washing machine of current affairs”. Clever rhetoric, which equates any sustained participation in public debate with its worst failings. My strategy or the mire: that’s the alternative. “He values his silence. It’s well seen,” notes an LR deputy.
Laurent Wauquiez is an ambitious man. For his country, perhaps. For himself, no doubt. His discretion, adorned with the noblest virtues, serves his presumed interests. Laurent Wauquiez judges that the right has little political space under Emmanuel Macron. Becoming a commentator on the actions of a president who will not be able to run again in five years is useless. “There is no political space on the right with Macronism,” he confided in April. “As long as Macronism is there, the right has no space. It is the ham in the middle of the sandwich.” The 2024 European elections finally promise to be tough for LR. You might as well stay away from it.
And then, the man has a tarnished image. His discretion is a way of regenerating his image among the French. “People want experience and renewal,” notes MEP Brice Hortefeux. “He has both. His silence will give him back a little virginity.” “He has something to erase, the only way to get there is to step back,” adds an LR executive. But it would be indelicate to expose this necessity. Let it be said: Laurent Wauquiez devotes all his energy to leading the right towards “a great collective success”, and not “yet another individual conquest”.
“Laurent should get to the point”
History will judge the quality of this strategy. It is an iron rule of politics: it will be judged in terms of the fate of Laurent Wauquiez. He enters the Elysée? “I knew it !” He fails ? “We told you so !” In the short term, however, it has a perverse effect. Commentators dissect his discretion. When he speaks, the former minister must explain it. This reflex is reminiscent of Xavier Bertrand’s internal campaign in the 2021 primary. The boss of Hauts-de-France was forced, at each meeting, to justify to LR members his departure from the family in 2017 and his sudden return before the presidential election . “Xavier had to do it and wasted time. Laurent should get to the point and not talk about his silence,” judges someone close to Xavier Bertrand.
Especially since Laurent Wauquiez, in small steps, is initiating a political offer. It describes a country in which “popular sovereignty” is no longer exercised. In Valencia, he praises “the France of happy regions”, an ode to the territories against Parisian centralism. A draft of a speech is taking shape. With the risk, for the moment, that Laurent Wauquiez’s decline will be commented on more than his little ideological stones.