The main candidates for the presidency of the Les Républicains party, Eric Ciotti and Bruno Retailleau, reject the idea of a “union of the lines”, of the type that could have been established in Italy or Sweden.
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“The union of the lines”: the expression, every time it is mentioned, makes you start within the Les Républicains (LR) party. Wanted by number of extreme right figures, such as the unhappy presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, this alliance project has, for the moment, always been rejected by the republican right, at least at the national level. The dike erected in France has not yet fallen, despite the inexorable loss of political space of LR, on the one hand, and the rise in power of the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen, of the ‘other.
Elsewhere in Europe, however, the classic right does not seem to have the same puders. In Sweden, at the end of the summer, and most likely in Italy, after the legislative election which will take place on September 25, the training equivalent to LR in these two countries have established alliances with the extreme right, In order to access power.
A situation that could end up finding an echo in France? At a time when the republican right must choose a new party president, certain executives, internally, fear that one of the candidates, the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes Eric Ciotti, will be tempted by such a marriage. This hypothesis is even regularly mentioned by the detractors of this supporter of a hard right line. Which imagine an explosion of the party if Mr. Ciotti were to be elected by the members, during the LR congress in early December, and that such a union took place. Has the elected official of the Alpes-Maritimes, they recall, has not already announced his preference for Eric Zemmour, in the event of a duel against Emmanuel Macron? On the merits, does he not already speak the same language as the extreme right, when he calls for a “French guantanamo”?
“a very bad calculation”
Questioned, Mr. Ciotti nevertheless sheds these fears with a backhand. “An alliance with the national rally would return to an suffocation of the right, which would lead to its disappearance,” he said. In his eyes, such a marriage would not even be “the political alliance but the OPA from one party on another”. “To say that there is too much immigration is not to be aligned with Marine Le Pen”, wants to believe Mr. Ciotti. “Or else, Gérald Darmanin, who considers him soft, is also in the same case”, according to him.
Beyond the simple case of Eric Ciotti, in fact, many similarities in public expressions between LR figures and the extreme right on sovereign, security and immigration issues. Concept conspirator of “great replacement”, quotas of the number of immigrants, direct link between delinquency and immigration … These themes are taken up regularly, here and there, by the right.
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