“Sorry, he doesn’t interest me”. Laconic, this response from an LR executive illustrates the annoyance, at the top of the Republicans, concerning the Aurélien Pradié case. The episode of pensions, during which the deputy of Lot sailed against his direction, initiated the break. The leaders now feign ignorance, when the troublemaker has chosen the solitary escape.
To forget the streak that cost him his position as number 2, he started “a tour of France” to defend his ideas on work, without asking anyone’s opinion. “They gave me back my freedom, so now they assume. Even if I think they regret it a little…”, smiles Aurélien Pradié. This Saturday, he brings together his supporters at the Invalides, in Paris. A way of responding to those who say he is more isolated than ever.
“There can be fighters, too, on the right”
By firmly opposing the unpopular government reform with a few colleagues, Aurélien Pradié came to light in the National Assembly and in the media. A position and notoriety that earned him many enmities within his family. “When we were looking for unity, he came like a scratchy hair with a dissonant voice, which disturbed our message. He annoyed a lot of colleagues, it left traces … “, blows Eric Pauget, deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes. Intractable on the question of long careers, Aurélien Pradié bludgeoned, for weeks, an “unfair” reform.
Tensions reached a breaking point on the last day of consideration of the text, February 17, in the National Assembly. Support of the government text, the boss of LR, Eric Ciotti, then gets angry to see his colleague acclaimed by the members of the Nupes and lets him know. “Don’t point your finger at me like that, Eric!” You do what you want, but don’t point your finger at me, there are limits! “replies the person concerned. The next day, a press release dismissed him from his post as vice-president. “You can’t be number 2 and say the absolute opposite of number 1 at a crucial moment. This has caused us considerable harm,” whistles Othman Nasrou, vice-president of Ile-de-France and first deputy general secretary of the party.
Aurélien Pradié assumes to have embodied loud and clear the internal revolt, and voted the motion of censure of the Liot group. “A lot of people came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for sticking around.’ They were happy to see that on the right too, there was character, said the 37-year-old elected official. It was time, with my friends, to pose a form of political temperament, to show that it was not only Mélenchon and Le Pen who held on. We have shown that there can also be fighters on the right”.
“This insistent flirting with Macronie is a slow poison”
Claiming “a right of character”, Aurélien Pradié now intends to rebuild it by opposing frontally to Macronist power… which does not always seem to him to be the position of his party. “This insistent flirting, this tango that comes back every three months, is unbearable,” he said. It’s a slow poison. If we give way behind Macron, the only ones who will still embody stable benchmarks tomorrow will be the far right and the far left. Elected twice in a left-wing constituency, this supporter of a “social right”, a claimed Chiraquian, considers it vital to speak again to the popular categories, going beyond traditional themes.
“Today, the right administers a legacy, and as soon as it gets complicated, we come back to security or immigration…, sighs the deputy of Haut-Rhin Raphaël Schellenberger. The party is not a clan or a club, it is necessary to carry a global vision on agriculture, industry, the environment, education… So many subjects on which the right is no longer audible, ”adds this close to Pradié.
“No future for the CGT right”
Within LR, many are ironic about the gathering this Saturday around Pradié, having fun with a “little end-of-year drink between a handful of elected officials”. “He was overhyped during the retreats, then the Pradié effect passed. That he tries to continue to exist, it’s normal, ”stings Eric Pauget. “I don’t think there is a future for the CGT right,” quips Othman Nasrou. An LR deputy adds: “The social right is already embodied by Xavier Bertrand. Him, I don’t know what he embodies, except perhaps himself…”.
But Aurélien Pradié is used to beatings. And have fun. “I had all the diseases: I was called a moron, a type of leftist because elected from the Lot, a guy who wants to be on TV, a presidential candidate, and now to have a big head . Once they have gone through all the pathologies, which they often have themselves, they will get over it”. He too likes to give out slaps, with that banter that so often despairs his elders. Refuting any isolation, the chosen one shrugs his shoulders on the tensions of recent months. “Take our last two presidents, Chirac and Sarkozy. They are rebuilding the right after an act of rupture, he says. It was never done with tenderness and warmth, it was absolutely violent. Besides, I am a choir boy”.