Republican activists reflect on the future of their party after the European elections

François-Xavier Bellamy, Les Républicains candidate in the European elections on June 9, gives his last campaign meeting on Wednesday evening. Activists hope that their party survives and are already looking ahead to 2027.

Last straight before the European elections, each camp throws its last forces into the battle. Wednesday June 5, François-Xavier Bellamy is in Le Cannet, in the Alpes-Maritimes, home of the right, for the last campaign meeting of the Les Républicains party. The list is given to 7% of voting intentions, in our latest Ipsos poll for Radio France and Le Parisien. For LR activists, this score would already be a victory and a sign that the party survives.

That evening, in a room in Yvelines, several hundred activists crowded together to listen to François-Xavier Bellamy. On the stage, the head of the list calls to his troops: “I didn’t see so many of you! This is the meeting of courage because if you are here, dear friends, it is because you did not give up, because you did not allow yourself to be intimidated. “

In the audience, voters almost all supported the candidate’s cause. Alexis is galvanized by his candidate’s positions, particularly against the students who blocked Science Po: “He shows a slightly more combative face. We needed him to show a very political face and I think that that awakens the activists quite a bit, but also all the right-wing voters.”

The campaign team is pleased to have finally succeeded in “break through the sound barrier” and to see the polls stabilize around 7%: the risk of falling below the 5% threshold on the evening of June 9 and of having no elected representative seems to be receding.

Among the long-time activists present at the meeting, Mauricette is also optimistic. She can’t stand to hear that it’s the end of the Les Républicains party: “No, he’s not dead at all. Absolutely not”, she says. She considers that “the polls don’t tell the truth” and thinks that his candidate will achieve a better score than that announced, but not to the point of exceeding 10%. So she wonders about the future of the party, with her neighbor Hubert. “The party may be finished, but not the activists, nor the sympathizers who are aroundhe replies. No doubt he should be transformed, LR is perhaps a little dated. Now we’ll have to move on.” Hubert said to himself “favorable” to the idea of ​​reworking the party, even if it means changing its name, because he thinks that Les Républicains have been “too marked by defeats”. He concludes : “We need to fix everything.”

“If we go alone in the presidential election, we will fail.”

an executive of the Les Républicains party

at franceinfo

“It’s certain that the LR label weighs us down”, confirms an MP who believes that only a score above 10% in the European elections could allow his camp to bounce back. There are many among the Republican parliamentarians who are thinking about the future of the right, most of them ruling out the hypothesis of a government agreement with Emmanuel Macron. Rather, they imagine that “the beam will work” as we approach 2027. “If we go alone in the presidential election, we will fail”ensures an LR executive who sees himself building the continuation with the right wing of the presidential majority.