During a strategic council, Republican officials decided on a line on Tuesday, April 26: no local alliance in the legislative elections, neither with the National Rally, nor with Reconquest, nor, above all, with La République en Marche. The elected deputies will sit in an independent group. A common position… but behind which already points the discord.
To be convinced of this, it suffices to rely on the deans! Since Tuesday, Nicolas Sarkozy’s former ministers have been scouring the shelves to try to explain their party’s position. So, apparently, everything is fine! Brice Hortefeux on franceinfo declares thus: “We are all united around a common objective, which is to be useful to the French and to our country.” “I think like others, notes for his part Jean-François Copé on Public Sénat to know how we can be useful to the French during this quinquennium. Same tone in the words of Nadine Morano on LCI: “They are useful deputies, you have to be useful.” They want to be useful to the French, so thank you very much, it’s very commendable of them. Yes but… what does that mean “be useful” ? Answer… nothing! No politician, ever, anywhere, has proudly claimed to want to be useless. It is obviously a totally hollow word, a pure element of language, which allows the illusion of unity to be maintained, without saying anything about the substance.
Apparently, their position is common. The Republicans aim to get as many MPs as possible in the legislative elections. Note that, here too, the opposite would be surprising… And again! Implicitly, you will see that we already feel some discrepancies emerging. “Our ambition is to create a parliamentary group”says Brice Hortefeux. “The more LR deputies we have who are elected, the more we will be in a position to weigh”assures Jean-François Copé. “We need a majority for the Republicanscontinues Nadine Morano. [Il faut que] we are the majority group in the National Assembly, and there we will have a right-wing government.”
We must therefore mobilize for the legislative battle, but to what end? Brice Hortefeux remains factual: keep a parliamentary group. He is not very explicit about the role he would have in the next legislature… Jean-François Copé, meanwhile, minces his words less: to have as many deputies as possible to “to weigh”. But weigh, how? Well, the only possible way if Emmanuel Macron obtains his majority, to weigh within an alliance of government. It’s very different from what Nadine Morano tells us. She wants to obtain a majority, not to weigh, but to impose a right-wing government. It’s exactly the same rhetoric as that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon… but with four times fewer votes in the presidential election. Proof that she does not care at all about the realism of her words. All it wants is to indicate that it does not intend, in any case, to be part of an alliance strategy.
There is indeed a line of cleavage within the Republicans and unsurprisingly it crystallizes around a bone of contention: Emmanuel Macron. “I am not in this approach which consists in saying everything is zero in what is done by Mr. Macron even if we have major differences. We can perfectly bring for two, three years, a certain number of reforms, assures Jean-François Copé. “I consider that his program is not good for France, and I consider that his record is zero for France”, declares Nadine Morano for her part. “We want to be constructive, we don’t want to be destructive”according to Brice Hortefeux.
For one, everything Emmanuel Macron has done sucks. For the others, it is possible on the contrary to be in a constructive attitude, even, to carry out reforms: here is the line of cleavage which exists today within the Republicans. A disagreement hidden behind elements of language, but which surfaces very quickly behind the speech. A disagreement hidden under the carpet by the legislative elections, but which will not fail to resurface as soon as they are over. In the text adopted Tuesday evening, the Republicans affirm that their movement would not be fungible in macronism, nor in lepenism. But can it still ensure its sustainability without fungibility? The question is now posed.