The right and the reshuffles of Emmanuel Macron, a painful story. The Republicans have learned to fear these sequences, made of war prizes which deprive it of oxygen. In 2017, the arrival of the Philippe-Le Maire-Darmanin trio precipitated the fall of the party in the legislative elections. The appointment of the Sarkozyist Jean Castex to Matignon had made the beam work three years later. Last summer, the poaching of the president of the LR group in the Assembly Damien Abad was an additional blow.
Today, the right can breathe. No elected LR is among the new members of the government, unveiled on July 20. The management of LR is not required to justify its existence or to demonstrate its ideological differences with Macronism. She can at leisure comment on this reshuffle of “end of reign”, limited to the “last square of faithful”. We even allow ourselves a little humor. “It’s a shame, I would have given them Pradié”, smiles a hierarch, in reference to the turbulent deputy of Lot.
“That would have made us tense!”
This status quo is hardly a surprise. “We did not expect poaching at all, says the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau. It would have been awkward, because it would have tensed us up!” His counterpart in the Assembly Olivier Marleix had called on the executive to “respect”. The relative majority went through it. The executive needs the voices of the right, not its men. To destabilize LR is to make it more difficult to tinker with majorities in the Assembly. No recruit, no government agreement: here is the ni-nor mitterrandien revisited. And too bad for the cluster of pro-coalition LR deputies.
The obstacle crossed, the right wishes to consolidate its status as an opponent of Emmanuel Macron. An imperative necessity to embody an alternative in 2027. Make no mistake about it: the support given by Éric Ciotti to the pension reform was a tactical choice. “It is not a submission to Macron, but a strategic positioning, confided in May the president of LR. This position of economic responsibility strongly distinguishes us from Le Pen.”
To differentiate yourself from Macron, what better than the regal? This eternal “blind spot” of a president from social democracy. In the aftermath of the urban riots, LR proposed a battery of right-wing measures, ranging from the forfeiture of the nationality of binational criminals to the establishment of criminal responsibility for the parents of juvenile delinquents. She established a link between immigration and violence, which the majority refuses to do. The party unveiled two immigration bills in the spring to respond to the executive’s plan. With a watchword: “It’s that or nothing.” “It would be political madness to vote for the government’s text, judges the deputy of Pas-de-Calais Pierre-Henri Dumont. In these cases, you might as well join the majority.”
Censorship threat
Tone up. And a threat arises: that of a motion of censure against the executive, which would bring down the government. Olivier Marleix raises this specter if the government tries to get 49.3 to adopt a bill that is too “lax” on immigration. Eric Ciotti, who will present a counter-project to the government’s budget, does not rule out the idea of censorship on this occasion. Simple words, explained an LR deputy to the Minister of Education Gabriel Attal. “There will be no censorship on the budget. We will fracture ourselves. And which deputy will want to go to dissolution because a finance law would lack blood and tears?” No matter: these warnings are a message sent by the right to the French: the opposition is us!
The storm should roar even stronger, with the European elections of June 2024. The right is playing its survival in this high-risk election. The head of the LR list will have to target his Renaissance counterpart to find electoral air. A choice all the more obvious as LR is eyeing the Macronist electorate with a view to 2027. In the running for the post, François-Xavier Bellamy has his argument in mind: he depicts the Macronist delegation to the European Parliament as a left group, targeting its votes on energy or immigration. “If Stéphane Séjourné is at the top of the list, I send a thank you letter to the Élysée, notes an LR executive. He is a left-wing candidate! He is a socialist with socialist reflexes.”
The right knocks. Finally almost all the right. Laurent Wauquiez does not machine gun Macronie in his media interventions. While overhanging, the boss of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region spares the executive while deploying a very right-wing speech. Why knock when others are doing it for you?