In a stunning development that has sent shockwaves through Paris, the head of the centre-right Les Républicans party has backed an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally in the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron.
The cordon sanitaire that has surrounded the National Rally for decades may be “disappearing”, with Les Républicans leader Éric Ciotti saying on Tuesday that he is in favour of dropping the longstanding position of his party to not work with the populist party and forming an electoral alliance which could fundamentally reshape the French political landscape.
“I believe that there is a need to serve the country that is in danger,” Ciotti pronounced according to Le Figaro, warning that on the political left, there is an “unnatural alliance of rebels” who defend “ideas which border on anti-Semitism” and then there is the “Macronist bloc which has led the country to where it is today”.
Therefore, he argued, that for his centre-right party to preserve its influence and steer the country back in the right direction: “We need an alliance while remaining ourselves… an alliance with the National Rally.”
French MP Eric Ciotti (The Republicans, LR, right-wing opposition) answers questions from the pack of journalists in front of him in the ‘Salle des Quatre Colonnes’ on May 28, 2024. (Photo by Amaury Cornu / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP) (Photo by AMAURY CORNU/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
“I hope that my political family which has been on the sidelines since 2012 and which has seen the decline of the country advance can have a large group in the Assembly,” the LR president added.
A poll published on Monday in the immediate aftermath of President Macron’s call for a snap legislative election — after suffering a humiliating defeat to the Le Pen party in the EU Parliament elections — found that RN currently enjoys the support of 34 per cent of the public for the June 30th election, putting the populist party on pace to secure a relative majority of between 235 and 265 seats in the National Assembly.
This would be short of the absolute majority of 289. But if Les Républicains — who currently hold 61 seats in the French parliament — follow through with Ciotti’s alliance proposal, it would likely put the right-wing bloc over the top. This, in turn, would force Macron to either appoint National Rally president Jordan Bardella as his prime minister and form a “cohabitation” government, or resign and trigger an early presidential election.
Hailing the “courageous choice” of the LR leader to back an alliance, former presidential candidate and head of the RN in the National Assembly Marine Le Pen said that Ciotti demonstrated a “sense of responsibility”, adding that “forty years of a pseudo cordon sanitaire, which caused many elections to be lost, is in the process of disappearing.”
Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of the National Rally and the prime minister candidate for the party, said: “By responding to this call to unite, Éric Ciotti chooses the interest of the French before that of our parties. Let us join forces to fight against migratory chaos, restore authority and order, and support the purchasing power of the French. Unity makes France.”
Yet, the proclamation from Ciotti has sparked divisions within his own centre-right party, with even the leader of the Républicains in the National Assembly, Olivier Marleix, demanding that Ciotti step down as president of the party. The head of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleu also claimed that he was not consulted about the announcement, saying: “A political party is not just one person”.
French Rassemblement National (RN) party President and lead MEP Jordan Bardella (C) speaks to media representatives outside the Rassemblement National (RN) party’s headquarters in Paris on June 10, 2024, a day after the European Parliament elections. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP) (Photo by ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images)
Former LR presidential candidate Michel Barnier — best known for his role as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator — said that while he supported “responsibility, order in the streets, public accounts, at the borders and social progress”, he was opposed to an alliance with the “populist and anti-European party”.
Apparently panicked about the prospect of an RN-LR pact, Macron’s minister of the interior Gérald Darmanin likened the move to the signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany, saying that Ciott has brought “disgrace to the Gaullist family by kissing Marine Le Pen… A shame. French people, let’s wake up!”
However, Ciotti has received some backing for the pact with RN, with Guilhem Carayon, the president of the Jeunes Républicains (Young Republicans) activist wing of the party, saying: “With Eric Ciotti and thousands of Les Républicains activists, we are choosing courage and common sense,”
Noting that the National Rally was the “choice approved by millions of French people” in the European elections, Carayon added: “We must listen to the people who can no longer stand Mr Macron’s policies. France First, France always.”
However, the budding alliance with the centre-right seems to have come at the cost of joining forces with the anti-mass migration right-wing Reconquête party of former presidential candidate and author Éric Zemmour.
On Monday, the lead candidate for Reconquête and the estranged niece of Marine Le Pen, Marion Maréchal, took the unilateral step of meeting with her aunt and Bardella in Paris without Zemmour in the hopes of uniting the right in the upcoming election.
Despite being left out of initial talks, Zemmour expressed willingness to bring over his 1.4 million supporters in the EU elections to the cause of the National Rally, saying that in light of the “popular front” alliance announced by the far-left on Monday, there was a need for a “great rally for victory”.
French Reconquete party lead candidate Marion Marechal speaks to media representatives outside the Rassemblement National (RN) party’s headquarters in Paris on June 10, 2024, after a meeting with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella a day after the European Parliament elections. (Photo by Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Yet, it appears that keeping Zemmour out of the potential coalition may have been a pre-condition for the larger Les Républicains to back the Le Pen party.
In a statement released after Ciotti’s announcement, Maréchal said on Tuesday: “Jordan Bardella informed me this afternoon of a change of position and the refusal of the RN of the very principle of an agreement. Despite my attempts at negotiation, the regrettable argument was that they did not want any direct or indirect association with Eric Zemmour.”
“This is obviously a great disappointment for France. I hope with all my heart that this refusal to organize a real coalition will not lead to a new victory of Emmanuel Macron’s coalition or, even worse, the victory of the coalition of the left and the far-left.”