(Paris) “They say anything and everything”: Emmanuel Macron went on the offensive Thursday against the far-right “tandem” and in particular his main rival Marine Le Pen, in full swing in the polls thanks to a buying power campaign.
Posted at 1:50 p.m.
Just ten days before the first round of the presidential election, the president-candidate returned to the field for a very long walkabout during a trip to Charente-Maritime devoted to ecology.
In the Macron camp, general mobilization is decreed as a new duel with Marine Le Pen becomes clearer, according to the polls, for the second round, as in 2017 but perhaps much more uncertain this time.
“Me, I see a tandem which arrives hobbling, which says everything and its opposite, which remains in any case convinced by the same ideas, dividing the country”, launched the candidate Macron to Fouras, referring without naming them to Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
“They say everything and anything, already say that they are going to hold meetings together, that they are hand in hand”, he continued, denouncing a trivialization of the far right and calling the party by Mme Le Pen by his old name of the “National Front”, as if to better send him back to his past, and show that he had not changed.
“What excitement! “Reacted Marine Le Pen in a tweet. “He flees the debate and makes irrelevant remarks for lack of arguments on my project of unity and national interest”.
The Reconquest candidate replied, also on Twitter, that there is “neither tandem nor extreme right” but “a president who does nothing, says nothing, thinks nothing, and who is betting his entire re-election on a final with Marine Le Pen”.
To fight ”
Entering the race late and very mobilized by the war in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron promised to “fight to continue to convince”.
Despite a minimal campaign, he is still given the lead in the voting intentions in the first round, around 28%, but Marine Le Pen has exceeded the 20% mark in recent days and the gap is still narrowing a little more second round.
A poll in particular, that of Elabe published on Wednesday which gives Emmanuel Macron at 52.5% and the RN candidate at 47.5%, gives cold sweats to Macronie which now focuses its attacks on the far-right candidate , a sign of the danger it represents.
“Of course, Marine Le Pen can win,” warned Thursday in the Parisian former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, support of Emmanuel Macron.
Unlike 2017 where she was sharply beaten in the second round (66/34%), the RN candidate could find a precious reserve of votes in the electorate of the former polemicist and even the most radical part of Valérie’s supporters Pécresse, which stagnates around 10%, even on the left in the electorate of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“We reap what we sow,” rejoices Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff, Renaud Labaye. “The planets are aligned, we had a good campaign, very solid”.
His deputy campaign director Jean-Philippe Tanguy prides himself on having “identified the issue of purchasing power very early on”.
Republican Front
As in 2017, Emmanuel Macron presents himself as the candidate “of the values of the Republic” against the far right. But a new Republican front to block the far right is not a foregone conclusion.
Given in third position in the polls around 15%, Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced that he would consult the 310,000 people who supported him online in the event of another Macron-Le Pen duel in the second round of the presidential election. before giving any instructions.
A position full of “ambiguities”, according to the environmental candidate Yannick Jadot for whom “ecologists have never hesitated to build republican fronts against the far right”.
Emmanuel Macron, moreover, again mentioned Thursday the controversy born of the use by the executive of consulting firms, in particular the American McKinsey, saying that it was “linked a lot to people who have made untruths”.
He judged “legitimate to take someone for the mission, either a contractor or a service provider, local authorities do it a lot, companies do it, it is normal for the State to do it”.
The case points to a supposed connivance with the business community, he who saw his start to his five-year term polluted by the accusation of being the “president of the rich”.
In an interview at 20 minutes, Marine Le Pen denounced “a real scandal”. “But it is Emmanuel Macron’s vision which, with the abolition of the ENA, the abolition of the status of prefect, is in reality a vision of deconstruction of the state”.