There is no right, there is only evidence of the right. Alain Juppé, whose campaign Edouard Philippe led in the 2016 primary, draws in his book A French story a lesson from his failure: he thought he was protected on his right because of his CV, ex-president of the RPR, ex-president of the UMP, fatal error. In other words, it is not because you have been on the right that this is enough to prove that you are still on the right. To the wise…
This Thursday, in the Assembly, the Philippist deputies (Horizons group) will not oppose a proposed resolution presented by LR calling on the government to denounce the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968 and which provokes the anger of Emmanuel Macron – “I did not understand that France’s foreign policy was defined in Parliament”, launched the president on Wednesday in the Council of Ministers, according to BFMTV. In L’Express, in June, Edouard Philippe resoundingly pleaded for the denunciation of this agreement facilitating the conditions of entry and stay in France for Algerian nationals.
Next week, it is on immigration that the friends of the former Prime Minister will make their voices heard. Tuesday, Edouard Philippe was invited to the group meeting of Horizons deputies. Are these working sessions “The Place to Be” for presidential elections? Laurent Wauquiez attended a meeting of LR deputies two weeks earlier. In front of his flock, Le Havre certainly reiterated its support for the bill carried by Gérald Darmanin, but the Horizons elected officials want to put their right-handed paw on the text, through a series of amendments. As with the system for regularizing illegal immigrants exercising a profession under pressure, clearly relaxed by the deputies of the Law Commission. “We are in favor of the compromise found in the Senate on the subject,” assures the deputy for Seine-et-Marne Frédéric Valletoux.
At the beginning of November, Edouard Philippe found another way to flatter the right hemisphere of the French, by questioning on Radio J about the return of military service to “preserve the interests of the country”.
We remember what François Mitterrand said about the centrists: “They are on the right, and on the right.” Today, it is the Macronists who are wondering: is Edouard Philippe on the right, or on the right? They suspect him of wanting to do tomorrow what existed yesterday: a sort of renewed UMP. But they still believe in the virtues of the famous surpassing. David Amiel, a Renaissance deputy close to the president, warns: “In 2027, the single candidate of the majority must be able to speak to both sides of our camp. The ‘at the same time’ is politically vital for the first round of the presidential election. If we lose a few points on the margins, it’s very annoying.”
When he talks about the right, Edouard Philippe knows his subject. On June 20, he took part in a conference organized by Le Grand Continent, and obviously – we are at the Sorbonne – it was flying high. After a joke – an allusion to the first issue of The Incorrect, published in September 2017, where it was written “We call left everything that has the face of Edouard Philippe”, the former Prime Minister gets into the hard part, references to Thibaudet and Rémond in support. With an observation in the form of a warning: “The new arenas of the European right seem unfavorable to the moderate, liberal right, and conducive to calling into question the foundations of our liberal democracy. […] As if the right was, in essence, conservative.” That day, he advocated “a new alliance between liberals and conservatives.”
Modernize the right, without confining yourself to it: this is the objective for those who deny wanting to recreate a modern-day UMP. Since the start of the second five-year term, Edouard Philippe has been pleading for a coalition. Show before the election what could be possible afterwards: he works to make possible an arc of work which goes “from the mitterrando-social-democrat left to the conservative right”, ideally from Bernard Cazeneuve to Bruno Retailleau. It is no coincidence that he took the opportunity of the war in the Middle East to write with the former socialist Prime Minister (non-Macronist) a four-handed text, published in La Tribune Sunday November 5: “If we speak today with the same voice, it is because the moment our country is going through, in the chaos that grips the world, carries threats that only the lucid and united nation can face and push back. And thus, faithful to its history and to the idea that other peoples have of it, give a reason to believe in reason.”
Conviction and pragmatism are fraternal twins here. Edouard Philippe senses it: the return of the good old right-left pendulum is not for tomorrow. So, it fits into the central arc born from the political tripartite. In his own way, “loyal, but free”: a little right-wing, but not too much. Enough to distinguish oneself from power and not be its legatee. Not too much not to frighten the historic macronie. A close minister confides: “We are the right float of the majority.”
“I am a man of the right,” he warned on the first day of his lease at Matignon, when he succeeded, precisely, Bernard Cazeneuve. “Of right.” The Republicans have little desire to label Edouard Philippe with such a soft label. They claim a monopoly on it to justify their existence and confine Le Havre to his role as former Prime Minister of Emmanuel Macron, a good student of “At the same time”. As if three years at Matignon erased these long years at the RPR and the UMP. “He only has the apparent stiffness of the right-wing man,” mocks the boss of LR MPs Olivier Marleix. “He has let public spending slip away, bludgeoned modest French people fiscally and made family reunification easier.”
If you’re not right-wing, you’re a Macronist for eternity! Condemned to wander in this political no man’s land with blurred contours. This is good, LR hardly believes in the future of this trend. “Macronism, whatever the diversity of figures, will not be able to succeed itself, judge Laurent Wauquiez. I do not believe for a moment in Edouard Philippe. When you have exercised power for ten years in a contemporary democracy, succession does not happen on your side.” The president of LR Eric Ciotti also judges that Le Havre will have difficulty establishing a “break” with the Macronist heritage.
Ideological purity is one thing, the instinct for survival is another. Make no mistake: many LR executives will not hesitate to exhume the story of Edouard Philippe to justify support in 2027 if LR does not rise from its ashes. “If no one emerges, I cannot exclude that LR decides to support an independent Philippe,” said someone close to Eric Ciotti in the spring. Our man was still director general of the UMP!
Plate tectonics will continue to evolve until 2027. With, especially for the candidates of the central block, another danger, that of the abyss, which Valérie Pécresse pointed out one day in front of Edouard Philippe: “If you are not divisive, you will disappear.”
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