Edouard Philippe makes known to his camp his recipe for getting out of the current crisis and it does not go through “immobility”. To move forward, the former Prime Minister notably defends again a coalition to “expand” the relative majority, with LRs and “elected leftists who do not find themselves in the Nupes”.
“Some will want to appease in a sympathetic radical-socialist form, not to provoke, not to advance, or to pretend to protect the French from the challenges of the world with Maginot lines which are imaginary lines”. But “after retirement, immobility is not an option, it is the guarantee of downgrading”, he believes in an interview with Figaro.
Philippe salutes Borne’s “exceptional commitment”
The former head of the first Macron government justifies the use of 49.3 because, despite the “exceptional commitment” of Elisabeth Borne and “the demanding work” of the LR leaders of the Senate Gérard Larcher and Bruno Retailleau, “everyone does not didn’t play the game” within the right-wing party. “I cannot forget that in 2019 those who fought the systemic reform that I proposed were campaigning for a change in the legal age to 65! “, recalled Edouard Philippe, member of LR until 2017.
To get out of the “crisis”, “it will be up to the President of the Republic to formulate clear priorities, in which the French recognize themselves: ecological transition, reindustrialisation, school, health… All these urgent and long-term problems term that arise in our country”, he judges.
The president of the Horizons party, who is holding his congress on Saturday in Paris, “still thinks”, as after the 2022 legislative elections, “that we need a coalition around priorities, in order to broaden our political base beyond the majority current. A coalition with all those who recognize themselves in the central bloc, from the LRs to the elected representatives of the left who do not find themselves in the Nupes ”. As for the majority, it could “function better” and “work in good intelligence so that the next four years are not four years of uncertainty or blockage”, he believes, after some clashes between Horizons and the Renaissance presidential party.
Will he have to stand out from macronism in view of the 2027 presidential election? “It’s a question of political tactics. I can see that some people are thinking about it, but that doesn’t seem to me to be the main point as we speak. And I’m not used to standing out from what I’ve done, ”replies the mayor of Le Havre.