Missed. This “union of rights”, it is clear that it does not exist. Whether we look at the side of the voters or the political apparatuses. The right-wing electorate – those who voted for François Fillon in 2017 or Nicolas Sarkozy before – is split into four blocks, between those who joined Emmanuel Macron, those who voted Valérie Pécresse, and those, less numerous, who slipped a newsletter Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour. From this point of view, bet lost for Eric Zemmour. And it is even worse if we analyze what happened at the party level. The former polemicist had promised to empty the Rassemblement National and Les Républicains of their vital forces.
Result ? A few individual poachings, personalities who were already banished from their political family, such as Guillaume Peltier or Gilbert Collard. It’s weak, we are still very far from the revolution dreamed up by the founder of Reconquête!, who approaches the legislative elections in a situation that is uncomfortable to say the least.
For this election, he offers an alliance to the National Rally, but Marine Le Pen does not want it. But is it really a surprise? After having called her a “null”, a woman with left-wing reflexes, after repeating that she had no chance of winning, after her relatives explained that they wanted to “kill” the National Rally… Certainly, in politics , ego wounds heal quickly. But not in seven weeks, the time that separates us from the legislative elections.
And then can we imagine for a single second Marine Le Pen giving up without Eric Zemmour first apologizing? Sunday again, he had this sentence: “This is the 8th time defeat has struck Le Pen’s name”. To negotiate alliances, you certainly need stubbornness, but the first quality is knowing how to put your pride aside. And that is not natural for the boss of Reconquest!, who behaved on several occasions during the campaign like “an unfinished teenager”, to use the expression he himself used for Emmanuel Macron. And then, concretely, who did he instruct to speak to the RN? Marion Marshal and Nicolas Bay. Two personalities hated by the relatives of Marine Le Pen, described as traitors to their party, even to their family. None of this creates the conditions for trust.
Strategically, does this union of rights, or national union as Eric Zemmou now calls it, make sense?
For Eric Zemmour, yes. For the National Rally, none. He needs it to show that he is part of a long time, that his candidacy was not just a whim. To achieve this, he must structure his party, therefore have elected officials. There cannot be any in the National Assembly, not in any significant number in any case, without an alliance with Marine Le Pen. It is politically irrelevant.
Why give a gift to a party that wants the “great replacement”? And having to justify for five years the votes, the excesses, the provocations of those who will, in fact, be presented as his allies? Sunday, in the second round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen came out on top, according to her calculations, in 159 constituencies. It is also in the lead in 23 metropolitan departments. She doesn’t need Eric Zemmour to continue to exist. Him, yes. But that he hadn’t expected.