For once, the atmosphere is relaxed. Warm, even. This Tuesday, December 19, the Les Républicains (LR) deputies meet at the quaestorage for an end-of-year drink. The opportunity to have a last drink before returning to the constituency for the holidays. Former deputies were invited. The ex-boss of LR Christian Jacob is there. Laurent Wauquiez too.
With a smile on his face, the putative candidate for 2027 strolls among the parliamentarians. He can be happy. The LR group is preparing to unanimously vote on a very firm bill on immigration. Finally, the 62 self-employed people move forward united. Finally, this pivotal group leaves its mark on a major text of the five-year term. He is not just a simple contributor of votes under a relative majority, portrayed by the National Rally (RN) as a crutch of Macronism. The right has made the executive bend, the majority is fractured in the open. “It’s the end of the same time”, greets Laurent Wauquiez to the Figaro. A hope has arisen on the right.”
“This places us at the heart of the institutional game, relegitimizes us, and offers a moment of unity,” relishes LR MEP Geoffroy Didier. Since the iron must be struck while it is hot, Savoie MP Émilie Bonnivard suggests to her colleagues that they hold a winter seminar in Maurienne. LR won. But what a strange victory. “Lack of luck is a professional fault,” said Nicolas Sarkozy. In this case, the right worked well. Its success is more a combination of circumstances than a long-term strategy. This victory is full of ambiguities: each fringe of LR – pro-coalition or independence – draws satisfaction from it. The success is ambivalent, its final beneficiary is unknown.
“Marleix took a big risk”
“He had a good time”, “he played it well”… Olivier Marleix is not used to receiving so many compliments. On a daily basis, the boss of LR deputies is rather denigrated for his managerial deficiencies. Too lonely, lack of human touch or authority. The kind to send a bouquet of flowers to a disgruntled MP… and have it sent back with a sharp word. This Wednesday, December 6, the deputy for Eure-et-Loir worsens his case. Without warning many of his colleagues, he tabled a rejection motion against the immigration bill, expected five days later in the Assembly. The text, tough in the Senate, has just been unraveled by the Law Commission.
Internally, things are rocking. The group is divided on whether to vote on the environmentalist motion, which won the draw. The Marleix method is shocking. The latter lets float the idea that the vice-president of the group Michèle Tabarot will vote for the motion, despite her reluctance. It was adopted on December 11 by just five votes. A third of the LR group remained behind. History retains a masterstroke, but the bullet did not go far. Olivier Marleix, relieved, sent a text message of thanks to a few Macron-compatible deputies who abstained in the name of the unity of their camp. “He took a big risk,” notes MP Ian Boucard. “If it didn’t pass, he would have picked it up.” “Ass lined with noodles,” smiles an elected official. Otherwise, “the group would have been deeply fractured,” concludes one executive.
“It’s not Austerlitz”
The executive could throw in the towel after this rout. In reality, he wants a text at all costs and convenes a Joint Commission (CMP) – where the right reigns supreme – to find a compromise. LR is in a position of strength, the negotiation having as its sole basis the Senate text. “We ran like idiots… behind the LRs. We gave up on everything to absolutely have an agreement with them,” laments a Renaissance executive. The government, a willing victim, is increasing its concessions. From this CMP, we retain the standoff between LR and the executive around the payment of personalized housing aid (APL) to foreigners. But the tone has also risen between the president of LR Éric Ciotti and the boss of the LR senators Bruno Retailleau. The first being more flexible – or less rigid – than the second in the negotiation. “It was quite hot,” notes an LR source. Laurent Wauquiez calls the two men on the phone to lower the temperature.
Deputies versus senators. This competition illustrates how much the right has navigated by sight. This fall, Éric Ciotti and Olivier Marleix asked Bruno Retailleau to have a preliminary question – equivalent to the rejection motion – voted on in the Senate against the immigration law, in order to stop its examination. Total opposition is at this price. Refusal of the Vendéen. The right-wing version adopted by the upper house in November, close to the final text voted by the Assembly, then provoked sharp remarks from certain LR deputies. “Little jealousies are as old as the world,” noted Bruno Retailleau at the time. In return, the latter is accused of condescension and of pulling the rug over him. It will already take an intervention by Laurent Wauquiez at a group meeting of LR deputies to calm things down. Sometimes criticized, today dubbed: strange course for the immigration law. An LR executive sums up: “We didn’t manage anything tactically. It’s a combination of successive circumstances which means that we landed well. It’s not Austerlitz.”
Ciotti-Borne phone call
This resulted in the biggest LR victory since 2017 in the Assembly. But for what long-term effect? The government is already imploring the Constitutional Council to censor the most divisive measures in the text. Oh surprise, these are those imposed by the right. There is betrayal in the air. “You are going to get hit in the Council,” confided the president of the Law Commission Sacha Houlié to an LR deputy, who teased him after the vote. Éric Ciotti doesn’t want to laugh. This Wednesday, December 20, he sent an SMS to Élisabeth Borne after hearing her on France Inter express her doubts about several measures of the text. He threatens the executive with a response in the media and in Parliament if the agreement reached with the right is not respected. Immediately, the Prime Minister called him back. Not convinced by his answers, he sent an official letter to Matignon this Friday to remind him of his commitments.
Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan. The success of the Republicans obeys this maxim. The right voted for a rejection motion against the government, before reaching a compromise with it. She held the pen, but the executive agreed to dip it in ink. His cultural victory anchors Macronism to starboard, despite the fractures observed in the majority. Anxious to distinguish itself from Emmanuel Macron after the pension reform, has the right sealed a strong break with power or has it moved closer to him? His staff argues for the first hypothesis, and praises a 100% LR law. Doesn’t the RN vote allow us to rule out the thesis of an LR/Renaissance alliance?
Return of the right-left divide?
The Macron-compatible LR deputies – signatories in November of a forum calling for a compromise on the text, also claim a share of the loot. Everyone was smiling on Tuesday during a group meeting. “We got what we wanted,” smiles one of them. An LR pillar sums up: “We bought ourselves a small dose of antibodies against macronism with the rejection motion. But, with the government, the general atmosphere is to say: ‘With LR, we don’t like each other , it’s hard, we twist our arms, but in the end we get there.’ This creates a pre-coalition atmosphere.”
He seems to have already moved on to something else. Laurent Wauquiez observed this sequence closely. In Le Figaro, he certainly welcomes LR’s “useful” opposition, far from the “ambiguities” of Macronism. But immediately warns: “The real opposition in the country is not facing Macronism or the National Rally. It is facing a left […] determined to pursue a multicultural policy of destruction.” He wants to be the herald of the right, and is counting on Macronist and Frontist voices to achieve this.
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