By taking down Jean-François Copé, they killed the right
In 2014, the UMP, then led by Jean-François Copé, won 20.8 % of the vote in the European elections, coming in 2nd.th position (despite competition from a centrist list). This came a few weeks after the unprecedented blue wave in the municipal elections. The UMP was then a winning machine with more than 300,000 members.
Yet it was the pretext of an insufficient score in the European elections (in addition to the start of the Bygmalion affair, of which he was cleared) that his detractors seized upon to push him to resign. Indeed, Jean-François Copé was the target to take down for the ambitious of his generation who had seen him get so far ahead on the road to 2017. It already seemed blocked off to them. Wauquiez, Pécresse, Ciotti during a press conference in November 2012, which will certainly remain in retrospect as the beginning of the end for the right, had already tried, without success, to oust Jean-François Copé. In 2012, they exploited the extremely tight internal ballot for the leadership of the UMP in an attempt to eliminate Copé. Fillon served their interests better, being older. The three of them cordially detested each other, yet had a common enemy on which to base an unholy alliance.
A succession of failures
It was these three who took over the leadership of the right at a given moment. Wauquiez was at the head of the party during the 2019 European elections and the list made a pitiful 8,5%. Many saw in it his personal responsibility and the manifestation of his inadequate ability to unite. He took responsibility and stepped down by resigning. Valérie Pécresse, she ran under the banner of the right in the 2022 presidential election, securing a disastrous score of 4.78% that will go down in the history of the right for several generations. She drew no conclusions from this and even aspires to return to combat.
European elections off to a bad start
Finally, for Eric Ciotti, head of a party that takes a tougher line than the RN while supporting Macron in the National Assembly with incomprehensible schizophrenia, The time of the verdict is approaching. To say that putting together the LR list for the European elections was laborious is an understatement. Re-appointing FX Bellamy to lead it was a gamble. But why not? He did the job with seriousness, consistency and integrity in the European Parliament, even if he wasn't an electoral locomotive. On the other hand, re-appointing Nadine Morano and Brice Hortefeux clearly amounts to making a mockery of the voters and signalling that LR remains a caricature of a small clique. What will be the result of this entirely hand-picked list by Eric Ciotti on which, in a winnable position for example, appears Laurent Castillo? The latter, a Nice local councillor and professor of medicine, unknown to the general public, is close to Éric Ciotti. Significant backing for the hypothetical conquest of Nice Town Hall? A royal decree...
Three possible scenarios
A score between 5 and 9 % would be the worst-case scenario because it would lock in the status quo. The right would be condemned to become an auxiliary force of the RN, but the leaders of this marginal party would save their necks and their positions, failing to be of the slightest use in public debate.
A double-digit score would be a near success in an election where LR is struggling to position itself. Neither European nor anti-European. Sitting in the EPP, where their influence has become insignificant, but not supporting Von der Leyen (the official EPP candidate) to succeed herself. Shut out of power for so long that they cannot rely on a presidency to boast a record or a presumption of competence.
A score of less than 5% should cause such a powerful shock that it would prevent the mussels clinging to the wobbling rock from avoiding drowning. The true refoundation of the right could then (at last!) begin and why not a return to Gaullist roots after all these morally pathetic and totally electorally counter-productive excesses? Ever since it abandoned any Gaullist or Chiracian reference, the right wing has gone from defeat to rout. Putting an end once and for all to the endless recycling of ideas from Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign, even though the world and France have changed profoundly, that is the objective. To say that the Ciottist party is not taking this direction is an understatement, so absent is the debate of ideas within it.
Completely rebuild the right wing?
Putting an end to faces, those who held government office under Nicolas Sarkozy, associated with all the defeats.
Ditching the name «Les Républicains» a brand that has never achieved the slightest success.
Put an end to obsolete statuses which gives a body of skeletal activists the opportunity to steer the party towards a political line with no future, as voters prefer the original to the copy.
Put an end to politicians who have no respect for national independence whether it be the many more or less repentant Putin worshippers or those subservient to the criminal government of Netanyahu through the intermediary of the sinister Meyer Habib.
Putting an end to politicians whose only vision is to keep their assistants and a chauffeured car.
Put an end to politicians who have no vision for the country's future but who ride the populist wave recommended by the polls without any talent or credibility.
Yes, the rout in the European elections could be the wake-up call the right so badly needs to stop putting plaster on the Titanic and instead rebuild the whole thing from scratch, entirely, from A to Z with two simple ideas: «a certain idea of France» and its greatness, and a certain «idea of man», far, very far from current xenophobia.
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