The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher does not want to be Prime Minister. He wanted to clarify things on Tuesday in front of the LR group.
Published
Reading time: 2 min
“It puts an end to the rumor”, “it’s important that he spoke out”, “better late than never”… Right-wing executives are not unhappy that Gérard Larcher has finally dotted the i’s. In the closed session of the meeting of LR senators on Tuesday June 4 in the morning – and with the aim of this being repeated – the President of the Senate is categorical: “I don’t want to be Macron’s Prime Minister”.
A few days before the European elections, there was urgency because the little music of the coalition was starting to annoy certain elected officials, while the head of the list François-Xavier Bellamy must face questions from journalists on this subject, as well as attacks of the RN and Reconquest on the theme: LR is not the opposition but future allies of Emmanuel Macron.
Gérard Larcher says he wants to silence “rumors whose origins we know”. On the right, many accuse the Élysée, and the Macronists in general, of exploiting the Larcher hypothesis at Matignon to discredit LR at the end of the campaign. But it’s a little more complicated than that, because Gérard Larcher himself blew hot and cold. “It’s the least we can say”, grimaces a senator. An LR advisor has fun: “Larcher cultivated strategic ambiguity, he played with this idea”.
Just repeat his statements. Interviewed in mid-May by The Sunday Tribune on the hypothesis of arriving in Matignon at the head of a coalition between LR and the macronie, the president of the Senate kicks in: “these decisions belong to the President of the Republic”. Not really an end to not receiving, nor an offer of service justified those around him. Still, Laurent Wauquiez had deemed it useful, just in case, to remind Gérard Larcher of all the evil he thought about a possible agreement with the Head of State. But a week ago, Gérard Larcher explained – always enigmatic – to AFP that it will be necessary to bring “answer” in the event of a far-right tidal wave at the polls on June 9.
Tuesday morning before the senators Gérard Larcher therefore wanted to close this chapter. “It is especially Macron who does not want Larcher to be Prime Minister”, denounces a tenor of the right. Remember that this is not the first time that his name has circulated for Matignon. Already at the time of the “yellow vests”, then regularly since 2022 and the absence of a Macronist absolute majority in the assembly. An LR strategist is therefore formal: “Whatever he does, his name will come up in the next crisis!”