December 7, 2022 - 1:00pm
Blink and you would have missed the election for the presidency of the once formidable Gaullist centre-Right party Les Républicains (LR). As it finds itself caught between a Macronist rock and far-Right hard place, Les Républicains has missed the runoff of the two previous presidential elections.
Reeling from LR’s pitiful 4.9% in last April’s presidential poll, 91,000 registered party members had to choose between three candidates. Aurélien Pradie, a more centrist MP, lost in the first round with 22% of the vote. The choice is now between Eric Ciotti, a known hardliner on immigration, and Bruno Retailleau, a well-mannered conservative senator. Ciotti has a slight lead, eight points, going into the runoff this Sunday.
In the face of liberal accusations of an alleged shift to the far-Right, Ciotti and Retailleau have both presented themselves as conservative figureheads, with wafer-thin differences between them. Yet both candidates shied away from crossing ideological red lines, and never responded favourably to Éric Zemmour’s Italian-inspired dreams of a united Right. In practice, they are now courting the votes of the defeated Pradié, who represents LR’s more centrist vein. Equally important, they are sending signs to their elected officials, including LR’s 62 MPs and 234 senators, that, really, they are not going to propel the party into the jungle of far-Right politics.
Les Républicains, formed in 2015 from the reconstruction of the centre-Right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), has always been a strange beast. The joke was that the Gaullists would bring the electorate and the centrists would bring the elected officials. Those tensions still exist, with many MPs calling mezza voce for some form of coalition with Emmanuel Macron. With Macron’s government and parliamentary roster increasingly staffed by former LR politicians, both Ciotti and Retailleau fear rocking the boat too much.
In the short term, if they manage to placate these officials (some of whom will be secretly hoping for a casus belli so they can break ranks), LR will not fundamentally change its parliamentary tactics. Short of a major blunder by Macron, they will not be drawn to the outer fringes of either the Left or the Right in order to topple the government, nor will they join a coalition. The party will instead try to play kingmaker on some bills (pensions reform, for example) to claim some much-needed political credit.
The real danger for LR, therefore, is not a jerk to the Right but rather a drift into irrelevance. Squeezed out of the headlines by France’s World Cup win over Poland this week, the election hasn’t broken the news cycle. The party remains embattled from the Right by Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, while Macron remains a formidable, albeit slightly weakened, electoral alternative for conservative-minded voters. Even LR’s electoral base is disappearing: what’s left of the pauperised middle class joined Le Pen; conservative Catholics backed Zemmour. Not too long ago LR could have hoped to become a de facto home for the pension-aged electorate, but they have by now largely jumped ship in favour of Macron.
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SubscribeThe Tory Party, take heed!
The Tory Party, take heed!
And the moderate Left is, too….
And the moderate Left is, too….
Moderate is boring. In today’s climate moderate won’t achieve anything. I’m not even sure (despite the article) that I even know what moderate means.
Moderate is boring. In today’s climate moderate won’t achieve anything. I’m not even sure (despite the article) that I even know what moderate means.
The right has been hijacked by clowns like Trump, Johnson and Zemmour and the alt-right incels that support them. Whatever intellectual grounding conservatism might once have is dead – the buffoons are in charge!
Johnson was barely right, Trump is waning and will be history soon and anyway he wasn’t very conservative. “Conservatism” currently has a lot of problems but it will come back.
Johnson was barely right, Trump is waning and will be history soon and anyway he wasn’t very conservative. “Conservatism” currently has a lot of problems but it will come back.
The right has been hijacked by clowns like Trump, Johnson and Zemmour and the alt-right incels that support them. Whatever intellectual grounding conservatism might once have is dead – the buffoons are in charge!