A well-known name from the French far right, a former member of the House of Commons, Philippe Vardon, was invited to the executive headquarters of the National Rally (RN) on Tuesday 10 September. What was said there does not bode well for a reconciliation between the former pillar of the French identity movement and Marine Le Pen’s party, which no longer wants to see Philippe Vardon anywhere near.
The latter left Eric Zemmour’s Reconquista! party the day after the European elections, in the luggage of Marion Maréchal, whose campaign he had led (5.5% of the votes). He imagined himself discovering the corridors of the Palais Bourbon for the first time at the age of 44, in the skin of the parliamentary attaché of the three deputies close to Marion Maréchal, elected with the support of RN during the legislative elections in July. According to our information, this will not be the case.
Marine Le Pen was not pleased to discover that MPs Eddy Casterman, Anne Sicard and Thibault Monnier had chosen the Nice man to accompany them. As soon as she returned from leave at the end of August, the three-time presidential candidate is said to have directly expressed her anger to the third, former federal secretary and regional adviser of the National Front (former name of the RN), furious at having learned of this recruitment from the press.
Central role during the 2017 presidential campaign
If Marine Le Pen’s request was not clear enough, the executive leadership of her party confirmed the dilemma imposed on the three “RN relatives”: leave the group or let Philippe Vardon go before the start of the parliamentary session, scheduled for Tuesday 1.Ahem October. Contacted by The worldPhilippe Vardon says it was agreed that his contract would end within that period, contrary to parliamentary practice. “It was planned from the beginning that I would install the equipment in the first few months”but no further, explains the opposition councillor in Nice, highlighting his departure from the Palais Bourbon “in two weeks”. Then tell “shift towards structuring the political initiative around Marion [Maréchal] »but not “fall” in the European Parliament, as a collaborator of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s granddaughter, elected in Brussels last June.
To replace him in the National Assembly, the three “like-minded” MPs will not be able to recruit the influencer Damien Rieu, another close friend of Marion Maréchal affected by the same ban by the RN. The co-founder of the dissolved Génération Identitaire group had been parliamentary assistant to MEP (RN) Philippe Olivier and a candidate in the 2021 departmental elections under the Le Penist colours, before joining Reconquête!. Philippe Vardon, for his part, played a central role during Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign in 2017 and wore the colours of the RN during the 2020 municipal elections and the 2021 regional elections, while holding the national office of the party. well. His star had faded following the defeat of Thierry Mariani in the regional elections of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, of which he was campaign director. Until his departure from the RN for ¡Reconquista!, in 2022.
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