Complicated, very complicated: the qualification for the second round of the presidential election is moving away for Valérie Pécresse. In the polls, the candidate Les Républicains is won by Marine Le Pen, and even ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. She was indignant that Emmanuel Macron copied, she said, his economic and social project, in particular with the postponement of the legal retirement age to 65, or by conditioning the payment of the RSA to about fifteen hours of activity related to professional integration. Result: the president-candidate deprived her of more oxygen. And this copy-paste encourages some elected LRs to already prepare the day after the election.
Some are already considering getting closer to Emmanuel Macron: since his project is a copy of that of LR, why not work with him? Result, Valérie Pécresse had already suffered a salvo of desertions with Eric Woerth, Renaud Muselier or even Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Now many elected LR anticipate his defeat. The deputy of Yonne, Guillaume Larrivé, puts his feet in the dish in an interview with the Point by calling on the Republicans to form a new majority around Emmanuel Macron.
The career of Guillaume Larrivé also sums up the moods of a right which no longer really knows where it has lived since 2017. In 2018, he published a pamphlet entitled The Macron coup ! Not tender… And then in 2020, he was the only LR deputy to vote for confidence in Jean Castex in the midst of a health crisis. His name circulated as that of a possible minister. He remained faithful to LR, assures that he will loyally vote Valérie Pécresse on April 10, but he wants an alliance of LR with a re-elected Emmanuel Macron.
The turbulence that threatens the right could occur as early as April 10 in the evening if Valérie Pécresse does not qualify for the second round. In this case, will she call to vote Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen if the final duel is the same as five years ago? In 2017, this is what the right-wing candidate, François Fillon, did, but not the Party boss Laurent Wauquiez who refused to choose.
This year again, the most right-wing fringe of LR, embodied by the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti, could refuse to block the far right. Tired of a third consecutive failure of the right in the presidential election, would some elected LR go so far as to call Marine Le Pen to vote? Will others embark on a hypothetical operation of “union of rights” desired by Eric Zemmour? On the rubble of a new defeat, it is indeed the explosion that threatens the French right.