What future for the Republicans party? The Young LRs organized their big political comeback this weekend in Angers, kicking off yet another war of leaders on the right. Activists will have to elect their new president on December 4. In the meantime: the boss of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes Eric Ciotti, or the mayor of Orléans Serge Grouard, have all embarked on the race. In the meantime, maybe soon another deputy – that of Lot – Aurélien Pradié. But the party remains traumatized by the latest electoral failures.
And the diagnosis is shared, here in Angers, among Young LRs. “We are not at the level for the moment, explains Thomas. It’s been years that we have absolutely not been able to break through, we are not audible at all.”
The Republicans, badly burned by the last electoral battles, once a pillar of political life, today stuck between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, which has become a party of depressed militants, like Thomas who, like others, is urgently looking for a leader. “What we have to do today, continues the activist, it’s finding someone who is capable of being a real alternative to Emmanuel Macron in 2027.”
“I think embodiment is extremely important. You need a leader, it’s the historical tradition of the right to have a leader.”
Perhaps not a right-wing Mélenchon. Although: “Maybe not on the same character, smiled Thomas. But in any case in eloquence, in the ability to make a dynamic, innovative campaign, yes.” The arrival of this much-desired leader must above all make it possible to administer a real remedy to the Republicans, it is to a clear political line. “Republicans live in an identity that is old”laments for his part Timothée, who still has a hard tooth against his party.
“Security, immigration: these are themes that are not at all in the reality of what French society is experiencing today. There may be an internal software error.”
According to him, other topics are important: “Ecology, of course, we are right in it, and it’s good to ask the question. Today, I think there is a questioning to be done. We are completely off the mark .”
For ten years, no LR candidate has managed to qualify for the second round of the presidential election. The number of deputies also melted in the legislative elections last June. But Maxime refuses the gloom: “A right which controls most of the regions of France, which holds most of the departments of France and most of the communes of more than 9,000 inhabitants of France, I do not think that it is a party in tatters. It is a party that just needs to rebuild the link to recreate a government party as we had before.”
Recreate a governing party? This will be the mission of the future president of the Republicans: Bruno Retailleau, Éric Ciotti or perhaps soon Aurélien Pradié. The war of the chiefs is launched, therefore. “We absolutely have to avoid that”, warns Maxime. The survival of the Republican right depends on it.
Political return and questions at LR: the report by Paul Barcelonne
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