Marine Le Pen has a memory. She also has bitter memories of the 2007 presidential election. By borrowing her quirks and words, Nicolas Sarkozy siphoned off Jean-Marie Le Pen’s electorate to take the Élysée. Seventeen springs later, the story stutters. Here is Bruno Retailleau reincarnated as a Sarkozy shadow.
The new Minister of the Interior has started a media parade in which he affirms in turn his desire to reduce “legal and illegal immigration”, assures that this “is not an opportunity”, also demands a referendum on the issue and begins an offensive against the rule of law. The far-right party would almost turn pale.
Marine Le Pen even passed the word to her troops: “You must give people the keys to reading.” In short: remember that Bruno Retailleau’s right-wing offensive is only a bland copy of the frontist program. By appropriating the RN dialectic, the Minister of the Interior could help empty the far-right party of its anti-establishment singularity, and divert some of its voters from the right path. Because the multiple presidential candidate still harbors a great fear: that of seeing the emergence of a populist figure, from the right, able to compete with her. In its ranks, we can be reassured. “People are not fooled, Bruno Retailleau will always represent this moldy and hypocritical right which hides behind the system,” believes a close friend of the leader.
Bruno Retailleau, supported but feared
For now, Bruno Retailleau remains a newcomer, without a track record, who draws on the ideas of the RN, and participates, in fact, in popularizing them. So, we observe him out of the corner of our eyes, with a mixture of support and irony. His recent statements on immigration have earned him some ridicule from the elected frontists who were pleased “to see their program taken up”. A tenor from the right smiles: “In the Assembly, he will be applauded by the RN, that may please him. Sensitive souls can suffocate in the ranks of Christian democracy.” But the enthusiasm of the RN is also met with a form of unease. “Bruno Retailleau could be our spokesperson,” declared Laure Lavalette this Tuesday at the microphone of BFMTV. Exit which illustrates the new ambivalence with which the frontists find themselves confronted. Bruno Retailleau is not an elected official from their party but a member of Michel Barnier’s government. So, how to position yourself?
There is a great risk here of becoming a supporter of a much reviled government. Would the macronie have tamed the RN? Marine Le Pen warned her troops: to the strategy of “chaos”, she prefers that of “construction” and refuses what she calls “low-end censorship”. “If we want to censor, we need a clear and valid reason,” specifies Jean-Philippe Tanguy. Result: the far-right party finds itself today on the verge of becoming this “crutch of the government”. A position long criticized by the right.
The frontists flattered
Because if the threat of censorship remains a constant in the ranks of the RN, its members relish their new position. Since the phone call made by the Prime Minister to Marine Le Pen, to apologize for the behavior of the Minister of the Economy, who had considered that the far-right party did not belong to the republican arc, the RN no longer touches the ground. “Barnier has reframed his minister well and that is a very good thing,” says party spokesperson and Yonne MP Julien Odoul. “He respects us, it’s going in the right direction, what happens next will depend on the behavior of the government.” “I believe that in the balance to choose ministers, not being unbearable to the RN was indeed a criterion,” says Somme deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy.
The Frontists are convinced of this, with their 125 deputies (141 with their Ciottist allies) they are the new masters of the clocks in this composite Assembly. “At the time of the general policy declaration, it was a real demonstration of force,” said Var deputy Laure Lavalette. Physically, we saw our superiority in the hemicycle. “Listening to them, the RN deputies would have absolute power of life and death on the new government. It’s a bit quick to forget that they would need the votes of the left to pass a motion of censure, which has always refused to associate its votes with those of the extreme right. Whatever. The frontist threat is enough to shake the Barnier government, forced to give pledges and Marine Le Pen, and worried, above all, about the strategy that the group leader will adopt in the weeks to come.
Unpredictability as a strategy
The RN itself is moving forward in vagueness. For the moment, the Prime Minister’s general policy declaration has, it seems, calmed the ardor of censorship. Marine Le Pen, from the podium of the Assembly, assured that she and her group would demonstrate a “spirit of openness”, while mentioning her red lines. “Barnier has brushed us in the wrong direction, and we are not in the spirit of censorship at all costs,” specifies a deputy, for whom his group has no interest in voting against the budget.
“We prefer to limit the damage by maintaining this government and preparing for the next legislative elections,” summarizes another. All that is certain is that nothing is certain. Marine Le Pen maintains a strategy: that of unpredictability. Tuesday, during the general policy declaration, she rewrote a large part of her speech during the Prime Minister’s address. With her knowledge of macronia, she becomes more and more silent, aware that her danger lies in her ability to surprise her adversaries. “She is silent, that worries me,” confides an advisor to the executive. In Emmanuel Macron’s entourage, we remember Marine Le Pen’s tactical reversals. “Don’t rack your brains, she’s not sure of anything herself,” says one of her close friends.
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