She has the ambition to “bring together in a very broad way.” Elisabeth Borne announced on Wednesday, August 21 in an interview at Parisianher candidacy to lead the Renaissance party. The former Prime Minister, who became a member of parliament for Calvados in January after being replaced at Matignon by Gabriel Attal, then re-elected after the dissolution, considered it “vital” to “preserve the unity of this party” and considered that Renaissance had “no vocation to be a chapel or a presidential stable”.
While Emmanuel Macron has still not appointed a new Prime Minister after the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7, Elisabeth Borne justified her candidacy by the absence of a clear majority in the lower house of Parliament. “With this Assembly, no one is going to implement their program. This political instability gives a different role to political parties: we need them to give hope to the French, to develop a vision, a project for the country. I want to put my experience at the service of this work, with humility and a lot of collegiality,” she explained.
This position could also be coveted by Gabriel Attal, who has already taken over the group in the Assembly. “Gabriel Attal is president of our group in the National Assembly and that is very important, because we need his energy and his talent. He said it himself, his goal is the group. So I think he wants to continue to lead it, rather than becoming secretary general of the party, which would lead him to leave the group,” replied Ms. Borne. So the two positions are incompatible? “Traditionally, it is not customary to be group president at the same time as leading the party,” she insisted. So far, Gabriel Attal has not revealed his intentions. But the combination of these two positions, “nothing prevents it,” he recently said privately.
For a “collegial approach”
The future of Renaissance, the weak link in the presidential system since 2017, is a major issue for the Macronist camp, while Emmanuel Macron will not be able to run again in 2027. Will the party play a role, while the party with the highest polling position within the presidential camp, Edouard Philippe, has preferred to found his own party, Horizons?
Ms Borne’s candidacy comes as the party, first called En Marche, then La République en Marche and finally Renaissance, must hold a Congress before November 30. This congress must elect 150 members of the National Council who will elect the party’s Secretary General. Formerly held by Christophe Castaner and Stanislas Guerini, the position has been held since 2022 by Stéphane Séjourné, current Minister of Foreign Affairs and close to Gabriel Attal.
The Prime Minister, who is particularly popular within the party but whose relations with Emmanuel Macron have notoriously deteriorated since the dissolution, has already taken over the Renaissance group in the Assembly, immediately renamed “Together for the Republic”.
In her interview, Elisabeth Borne quotes Gérald Darmanin, with whom she says she shares the “same vision” for a “collegial approach”. She will attend his political return on September 15 in Tourcoing. Where, ironically, she had come last year as Prime Minister to extinguish the overly noisy ambitions of her Minister of the Interior.
The former prefect, who brought about the pension reform and budgets adopted under Article 49.3, also seemed to distance herself from the president after the dissolution, offended by the argument of a blocked Assembly, while she had struggled to have more than sixty texts adopted without an absolute majority.