While the President of the Republic is stuck in his consultations to find a prime minister, Edouard Philippe is seeking to take the initiative. In an interview with the weekly the point, On Tuesday, August 3, the mayor of Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) announced that he was “candidate for the next presidential elections”.
The statement is not a surprise, Philippe has not hidden his ambitions since his departure from Matignon in the summer of 2020. But the pace is unexpected and puts pressure on Emmanuel Macron, accentuating the image of a weakened head of state now forced to see how the future is written without him.
Without ever naming him, Edouard Philippe also launches an attack against the current president, incapable of resolving the political crisis that he himself triggered. “all the bad” What he thinks of the dissolution of the National Assembly, he adds to his complaints the choice of Emmanuel Macron to thank Elisabeth Borne, on January 9, for replacing Gabriel Attal, thus depriving himself of a result the day after the European elections. “I recommended to the President of the Republic to retain Elisabeth Borne, he trusts. It was not [sa] decision. “
But the Elysee candidate is more critical of the country’s budgetary situation. “Nobody believes it!” he exclaims, referring to the 2024-2027 stability programme presented by the executive in Brussels in April of this year. “Our budgetary situation is one of the worst in Europe”continues the man who has made the reduction of public debt one of his political markers.
By declaring himself more than three years before the deadline, Edouard Philippe fuels the demand “individualism” what his detractors do to him. “Although the current situation is urgent, the urgency is to find stability (…), Declaring your candidacy does not seem very appropriate today”This is what the president of the Macronist senators, and a faithful among the faithful of the Head of State, François Patriat, lamented on LCI. “The providential man is rarely found three years before a presidential election, just as love at first sight is rarely predicted three weeks before a meeting.”adds a member of the Government, who judges the timing of this statement “mole”.
Pompidolian gesture
” Otherwise, —answers MEP (Horizons) Nathalie Loiseau. The French can no longer stand this political class that beats around the bush and does not speak to them frankly. We have been having a shadow play for weeks. Frankness and sincerity are always the time. » Edouard Philippe, for his part, continues to place himself above the fray, denouncing “immobility” consubstantial with “Ungovernable character of a National Assembly without a clear majority”.
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