The first piece was installed on April 10, 2022. That evening, in the first round of the presidential election, Valérie Pécresse was pulverized. With 4.78% of the vote, the Republican (LR) candidate is siphoned off by Emmanuel Macron. The prospect of a duel between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon has triggered the irreversible mechanism of the useful vote, the tomb of the right. Two years have passed. What if this “union” of voters found a political outlet? At first glance, the hypothesis has the force of evidence. The porosity of the LR and Macronist electorates is obvious. The right and the central bloc are engaged in a coalition, called “common base” by Michel Barnier.
Then the Prime Minister can look to the horizon. On Wednesday, November 13, he discussed the presidential election in front of deputies from the Economic Affairs Committee. “If we don’t have a single candidate from our groups, we will find ourselves with the extreme right and the extreme left in the second round,” he told the guests. The continued rise of the National Rally and the surge of the left demand unity. This strategy is almost an arithmetic obligation. “We have no other choice than to extend the common base in 2027,” judges a right-wing minister, with a touch of fatalism. In the spring, the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher slipped to the Minister of Health Frédéric Valletoux, close to Edouard Philippe: “In 2027, we will be behind the same candidate.” Without saying the name of the lucky person.
Resentments and differences
There’s a long way to go. The coalition built by Michel Barnier reveals its fragility every day. There are these old resentments between the right and the Macronists, enemies who became allies by the grace of dissolution. The right, revanchist, keeps in mind the humiliations inflicted by the “new world” in 2017. The central bloc mocks the arrogance of its partner, who seems to forget his electoral downgrading. Each camp remains in its own lane, no meeting has brought together the deputies of the common base.
And then, differences remain. Macronists struggle to understand LR’s economic doctrine, far removed from its liberal DNA. A release from Bruno Retailleau, and a whole fringe of Renaissance is suffocated! Who imagines the Vendéen on the Zenith stage with Valérie Hayer? “Today, each camp has an interest in increasing visible differences. Otherwise, its political space risks disappearing,” deplores an Ensemble pour la République (EPR) executive. Thus, Gabriel Attal welcomed in September “the opportunity to show our differences with LR” in the coalition. An LR deputy tried to coax one of his relatives. “Barnier will not be the sole candidate, you must flirt with the LR so that Attal is a candidate. He must not alienate them.” In vain. To stand out is to exist.
These divergences are the product of distinct strategies. Gabriel Attal is a child from the central block. Edouard Philippe privately notes the solidity of the tripartition of political life. “We have a left bloc and an RN bloc, we must therefore organize the central bloc,” he assured from 2023. This supporter of a “coalition” advocates a gathering “of the mitterrando-social-democrat left to the right conservative. Laurent Wauquiez is less comfortable in this space, an ersatz of macronism. “The real opposition in the country is not facing Macronism or the National Rally. It is facing a left […] determined to carry out a multicultural policy of destruction”, he theorized in December 2023 in the Figaro.
He is counting on the votes of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to satisfy his presidential ambition. And consequently develops a right-wing discourse, far from the ideological center of the common base. The right wants to sweep away a dying Macronism. The central bloc wants to complete its takeover bid for LR, a great work by Emmanuel Macron. Therein lies the ambivalence of these strategies. All represent a hegemonic temptation on the common base, but result in its fracturing. The union will only be more delicate.
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