The Republican Party is still struggling to rise in voting intentions for the European elections and is lagging behind the RN. The farmers’ crisis is an opportunity for the right to assert itself against the extremes.
While the anger of farmers is transforming into a real protest movement, this crisis is also tending to become a political playground five months before the European elections. This did not escape anyone’s notice; all political forces rushed to express their support for the agricultural world and position themselves as representatives and defenders of the sector. If the government must manage the crisis while looking after its image, on the opposition side it is the electoral campaign which is beginning to be organized. The far right is taking advantage of the fed up of farmers, stifled by an accumulation of European standards, to defend its vision of a Europe subject to authority, legislation and national sovereignty.
Bardella on the field before the others
Despite the rapid response of the government and the majority, with speeches by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture over the weekend, the president of the National Rally was one of the first to go on the ground. He went to a farm in Médoc, in Gironde, on January 20 and to fishermen from the Bay of Biscay held at the dock, in Lorient, on January 23. Gabriel Attal, for his part, began meeting with agricultural unions on the evening of Monday January 22. But it is especially on the parties of the right and the extreme right, Les Républicains and Reconquête, that the RN has taken a lead.
After Jordan Bardella’s visits to farmers, the other right-wing oppositions want to get back into the race. Thus, Marion Maréchal, head of the Reconquest for Europeans list, joined a demonstration of French farmers in front of the European Parliament in Brussels, on January 23, to denounce the standards imposed by the Twenty-Seven. While François-Xavier Bellamy, chosen to lead the LR list, participated the same day in a press conference on the “agricultural crisis” before going to Senlis, in Oise, to visit a farm and meet the local farmers.
LR erased by the speeches of the extremes?
If Bardella and Maréchal most often make their trip alone, it was well accompanied that François-Xavier Bellamy went to meet the farmers: with the deputy for Aisne Julien Dive, the MEP Anne Sander and the boss of LR deputies Olivier Marleix. A way to better permeate? Or to make yourself heard better? Because this is one of the party’s fears: being invisible in the face of competition.
The Republicans come far behind the RN and the presidential majority in voting intentions in the various polls. With only 6.5% voting intentions according to the latest study, published by the‘Ifop for The new economist, the party even comes behind Reconquest, but also the PS, the ecologists and LFI.
If LR cannot count on the vote of left-wing voters, the party wants to have more weight on the right by convincing voters ready to support the extremes. But this promises to be difficult: “Bardella takes the spotlight, Maréchal will go very far in criticizing the EU, and we will not dare to hit so hard” slipped a right-wing executive to Politico. The Republicans therefore have little room for maneuver, but they are banking on the legitimacy of their elected officials. An argument which must be highlighted even more at a time of the farmers’ crisis according to MP Julien Dive who reminded the political newsletter that “95% of our MPs come from rural or agricultural areas”.