Edouard Philippe announces his candidacy for the 2027 presidential elections

His candidacy was no longer in doubt, but he came amid political instability. Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe formalized his candidacy for 2027, in an interview with the weekly The point published on Tuesday night, stating: “I will be a candidate in the next presidential elections.”. “I am preparing to offer things to the French. What I propose will be huge. The French will decide”explains the president of the Horizons party, Prime Minister of Emmanuel Macron from 2017 to 2020.

If the mayor of Le Havre’s ambitions for the Elysée were no mystery, especially given his constant popularity in the polls, Philippe had never publicly announced his presence at the starting line in 2027. “It is often said that for a presidential election you should not want anything else. I agree”Philippe insisted, saying he was prepared, even in the event of early presidential elections.

Basically, the former resident of Matignon evokes in particular four dangers that France must face in the current period: the danger “democratic”the danger “budgetary”the danger of “immobility” and the danger of “public order and security”. Regarding the result of the legislative elections, Philippe says he remembers especially “the ungovernable nature of an Assembly without a clear majority.” But also that in his eyes “The New Popular Front bloc is smaller than the central bloc.”

Questioned also about Matignon and the hypotheses of Xavier Bertrand and Bernard Cazeneuve, the mayor of Le Havre replied that he would support “any prime minister elected in a political space ranging from the conservative right to social democracy”. “All governing parties should have as their main objective to promote the stabilization of political life”Mr Philippe also urged. A message addressed in particular to his former political family, the Republicans: “The right must be involved. By refusing to participate in this central bloc, it is pushing the whole thing to the left.”.

“Loyal but free”

Since 2020, Edouard Philippe has been working to meet all the requirements to become the queen of the elections. Three years earlier, Emmanuel Macron, elected to the Elysée, entrusted Matignon, to everyone’s surprise, to this Republican (LR) figure, Énarch, elected mayor of Le Havre in 2010.

Matignon’s tenure was complicated at times by the violent crisis of the “yellow vests”, and relations with the president quickly became delicate. They led to his replacement by Jean Castex in July 2020, after the first phase of the Covid-19 crisis, which earned Édouard Philippe remarkable popularity, something rare when leaving the rue de Varenne.

Since then, this 53-year-old State Councillor, with a slender silhouette, a beard that was first brown, then pepper and salt and almost gone, who suffers from alopecia, has worked to prepare his candidacy, founding his own formation, Horizontes, at the end of 2021, even before Emmanuel Macron’s re-election campaign.

Kept tight by a relative majority, cultivating in the Assembly the creed “loyal but free” Ordered by its leader, Horizons raised its voice after the dissolution, emphasising its financial independence and managing, unique in the former majority, to maintain its number of deputies.

Enough to allow Edouard Philippe to show more and more ostensibly his distance from the Head of State. And to cultivate his singularity, even if it means provoking controversy by claiming to have shared a “Cordial dinner” with Marine Le Pen last year, which allowed him to see, he says, “Very deep disagreements on many issues”.

Asked by Agence France-Presse, the Elysée Palace did not comment.