This second five-year term like no other is far from over, yet 2027 and its cohort of putative candidates are already moving forward. Behind the scenes, some learn to dodge trippers, others become familiar with the art of conspiracy, in short, everyone prepares post-Emmanuel Macron with rigor and determination. The political department of L’Express offers to help you follow, thanks to a weekly meeting on our websitethe progress of these ambithose who hope to climb, quickly and without injury, the steps of power.
While the presence of the RN at the demonstration against anti-semitism organized on Sunday November 12 sparks controversy and disturbs minds, a minister notes: “The left agreed to sit around the table with Jordan Bardella when Emmanuel Macron invited party leaders in Saint-Denis at the end of August, the real turning point is here. It would have been unimaginable not long ago.”
Jean-Marie Le Pen, anti-Semite? Not in the opinion of Jordan Bardella, who assured, last Sunday, on the microphone of BFMTV, that the latter was not. Immediately, the members of the National Rally were summoned to unite and repeat the formula on television sets. “There were ambiguities, but Jean-Marie Le Pen was not anti-Semitic.” Mathilde Paris, however, MP for Loiret, broke down, and assured that she believed “on a personal basis” that the former president of the far-right party (who has been the subject of multiple condemnations for his comments on the ” batch” or the gas chambers “detail of the history of the Second World War”) was indeed anti-Semitic. “I don’t understand why Bardella got involved in this, when Marine Le Pen herself excluded her father for this reason, wonders a former traveling companion. Just before participating in the march against anti-Semitism, they put a coin back in the machine… What a sense of timing, really.”
Philippe Bas is not happy. Senator LR from Manche opened the way in February for the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution. By substituting the protection of a “freedom” for that of a “right” – a term retained by the National Assembly during a previous vote, this former collaborator of Simone Weil has outlined a compromise between the two chambers, which must vote on a text in identical terms to allow the modification of our fundamental law. Emmanuel Macron seems to agree with the senator. “The law determines the conditions under which the freedom of a woman is exercised, which is guaranteed to her, to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy”: this is the wording that the president officially wishes to add to article 34 of the Constitution. Yes, but there you go. This reference to a “guarantee” annoys Philippe Bas. “This wording is ambiguous and relates to ‘at the same time’. Guaranteed by whom? How? This incision is purely political. If we want to give it legal significance, it worries me. This vagueness is worrying. It should not be we are moving towards an absolute right, which is a freedom conditioned by the legislator and having its own limits.” Abortion in the Constitution is not yet done.
Since we tell you that Gérald Darmanin wants to be constructive with the LR senators on his immigration bill! The latter voted for an amendment transforming State Medical Aid (reserved for illegal immigrants) into emergency medical aid. The Minister of the Interior has publicly said that he supports this modification… while he privately considers that it constitutes a legislative cavalier (off topic compared to the subject of the government text) and would be censored as such by the constitutionnal Council. The government ended up giving an opinion of wisdom during the vote in the Senate, pending examination of the text in the National Assembly.
No matter the excesses, no matter the failures of the leader, loyalty is, in the eyes of Brice Hortefeux, Nicolas Sarkozy’s lifelong friend, the most cardinal of virtues. The European deputy, although hardly suspect of acute Mélenchonism, judges harshly the behavior of the LFI deputy Raquel Garrido, withdrawn from the group in the Assembly after having increased the criticism against Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in particular. “That’s everything I hate,” he rages. “She owes everything to Mélenchon and she’s destroying him. She’s right to disagree with him, but we don’t have to rush to a spot to express your differences.”