doNicolas Sarkozy has been defending this thesis for years: the right must ally itself with the Macronist camp to find its way back to power and credibility, while its opposition has been weakening since 2012. Rather than vegetating outside, it could also impose itself from within. “We take cover behind a leader and then, when the time comes, we separate and strike”The former president repeated, sometimes combining his statements with a mimed gesture: the dagger that we raise and plant, clack. He himself, he said, resorted to this stratagem (an internal takeover) when he was a minister of Jacques Chirac, before being elected deputy. “rupture” in 2007.
The tenors of the right have long ignored this tactical advice. Resentment towards Emmanuel Macron, who had ” stolen “ The victory of 2017 was such that allying with the apostle of the “new world” was unthinkable. Moreover, they were burned by the meticulous care with which this young president sought to weaken them (and humiliate them), by poaching from their ranks. From the recruitment of Edouard Philippe and figures from the Les Républicains (LR) party (Bruno Le Maire, Gérald Darmanin, etc.), in 2017, to the spectacular poaching of Rachida Dati, in January 2024. During the first five years, the former president of LR, the Chiracian Christian Jacob, was not offended by the reminder that Edouard Philippe had “hidden under a blanket, in the back of a car”to arrive discreetly at the headquarters of En marcha!, between the two rounds of the 2017 presidential elections: a “traitor”despised.
The bitterness only grew. At each election, when more and more right-wing voters migrated to Macronist shores, Emmanuel Macron gleefully carried out operations to destabilise LR, in order to dispossess the right. In the 2022 presidential election, LR candidate Valérie Pécresse was the target of a “demonetisation operation” carried out from the Elysée Palace, aimed at reducing her political space (Macron thus took over the majority of her programme) and diverting her electorate (she got 4%). “France is on the right. If I want to win, I have to divert to the right”the president then theorized, according to journalists Olivier Beaumont and Nathalie Schuck, authors of Honey, I got the right one! Research (Robert Laffont, 2021).
“We can achieve a fantastic takeover bid”
Is this movement about to be reversed? Seven years after François Fillon’s defeat, the right has embarked, thanks to an unprecedented political crisis, on a coalition with Macronie. Anxious to prepare for alternation in 2027, Laurent Wauquiez first advocated a “support without participation” in government. The prospect of seeing a left-wing prime minister appointed, and then the refusal of the Socialists to explicitly support Bernard Cazeneuve, backed the right into a corner: they could not avoid their turn, unless they were reproached by their voters, impatient to see the country break out of its routine and escape its responsibilities. A U-turn: Wauquiez allowed the appointment of Michel Barnier, before giving his approval, on Wednesday 11 September, to the presence of LR deputies in the government. “We can achieve a formidable public acquisition offer for the Macronist electorate”had been suggested by the former head of the LR deputies, Olivier Marleix, as his successor in July.
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