the presidential election is over! His withdrawal video

MONTEBOURG. Arnaud Montebourg withdraws from the presidential race. The candidate formalized his withdrawal in a video published on Wednesday January 19, 2022, regretting that the union was not made.

[Mise à jour le 19 janvier à 12h01] End of clap for Arnaud Montebourg. The left-wing candidate for the presidential election formalized, Wednesday January 19, 2022, his withdrawal from the race for the Elysée. The announcement had been expected for several days, the candidacy of the former minister of François Hollande being relegated to the depths of the polls. Less than three months from the first round, Arnaud Montebourg has therefore recorded his withdrawal. “The time has therefore come for me as a free man to tell you that I have made the decision to withdraw from the presidential race,” he said in a video posted on social networks. The former president of the General Council of Saône-et-Loire regrets that his “original, innovative, proactive” proposals did not have the desired effect and that the “threat of the great economic and social downgrading of France” whose he reports did not lead to the union, despite his attempts.

“I have not succeeded in uniting my candidacy with other candidacies in a common program, despite my efforts and the commitment of my team. I have engaged in a frank discussion with all the candidates related to my family politics, but no one is determined to overcome our disagreements. I have drawn the conclusion that my ideas have certainly become foreign to my own political family”, he explains. In addition to the negotiations between the campaign teams, Arnaud Montebourg had attempted a publicity stunt in December by staging on social networks his calls to the various left-wing candidates to try to initiate a union.

Faced with the acknowledgment of failure, the former Minister of Productive Recovery considers that it is “useless and hopeless to add disorder to the confusion of too many candidates”, resigning himself to withdraw from the race and to only follow the campaign from afar, without a role: “I have decided not to support any candidate since these prospects drawn up for the country are not shared”.

The “upturn” therefore stops there. There was no longer any doubt for a few days, but Arnaud Montebourg has indeed said stop to his Elysian ambition. The ex-deputy never managed to take off in the polls, in the middle of an already fragmented left. “His proposals did not find the desired echo” confided his campaign manager, Mickaël Vallet, to France info. If he tried, in vain, to lead the union of the left, Arnaud Montebourg was not even retained by the process of selection of the popular primary, definitively recording his exclusion from the national ballot. He also announces it: “I have decided not to support any candidate since these prospects drawn up for the country are not shared”.

Credited with 1 to 3% of voting intentions, Arnaud Montebourg wanted to create a rally going beyond the left. His program prioritized the reindustrialization of French industry as well as raising wages for the working and middle classes. Other measures such as the restoration of compulsory national service, the provision of a million housing units in the countryside or better immigration control were on Arnaud Montebourg’s program.

Withdrawal of Arnaud Montebourg from the presidential election

It is in a video recorded and broadcast on social networks that Arnaud Montebourg officially recorded his withdrawal from the presidential campaign, with bitterness. “During these four months of campaigning, I defended original, innovative, proactive proposals. I placed economic and social solutions at the forefront, because I believe that they can profoundly change the future of the country: the increase in wages and the sharing of the wealth created in the company, a policy of Made in France XXL, the exit from oil by relying on nuclear power, the restoration of a reasonable share of national sovereignty in the face of the intrusions of the European Union and the reconstruction of a democracy worthy of the name, the return to the land to help the French leave the metropolises, strengthen our rural territories and put an end to the scandal of medical deserts”, he lists, before continuing: “I also defended an intransigent vision of the Republic which must assume security everywhere in the territory and must never give in to the principle of secularism, as well as a demanding immigration policy in which integration is a duty for us and for all those we decide to welcome”.

Believing that “these proposals could bring together a large number of our compatriots and change their daily lives” and that they “allowed us to imagine a new social and political compromise capable of reviving our country, giving it new strength in the face of the chaos of world, to the programmed shock of empires, to climate change, to global migratory pressure and to the threat of great economic and social downgrading in France”, Arnaud Montebourg regrets it: “unfortunately they have not been heard”.

Although he started in September by criss-crossing France with the TERs, the candidate’s project did not arouse enthusiasm on the left. Moreover, his proposal to block private money transfers to countries refusing to take back their nationals subject to an obligation to leave French territory was his stone in the shoe, the suitor for the Elysée Palace having been accused of taking back a far-right proposal.

Party of Arnaud Montebourg

In January 2021, Arnaud Montebourg had created his own political party, L’Engagement, with the aim of creating a presence at the departmental level to support his candidacy. Promoter of organic products made in France, he had thus put his career as an entrepreneur on hold.

Short biography

Born October 30, 1962 in Clamecy (Nièvre), Arnaud Montebourg joined the Socialist Party in 1985. A lawyer by profession, he began his political career in the late 1990s. Elected deputy for Saône-et-Loire in 1997, he became secretary national of the Socialist Party in 2008. After having been Minister of the Economy under the presidency of François Hollande, Arnaud Montebourg is a candidate in the socialist primary for the presidential election of 2017, and finishes third in the first round. He then retired from political life to start businesses in the agri-food sector.