LIVE – In Cannes, Éric Zemmour signs the rallying of his “friend” Gilbert Collard

She honored the invitation. Invited by Hervé Morin to the National Council of her formation, the Centrists, Valérie Pécresse has just arrived at the Maison de la Chimie, a building in the 7th arrondissement of Paris where the meeting is being held. A move to the center which follows a sign sent to his right wing earlier, through a meeting with Laurent Wauquiez at the end of the week.

Eric Zemmour’s trip to Cannes should allow him to pose as a unifier of his political and ideological family.

He thus described the poaching of Guillaume Peltier – from the ranks of LR – then of MEPs Jérôme Rivière and Gilbert Collard – at the RN – as a “political symbol”. That of an “aspiration to come together” which, according to him, would animate the right and the far right “for 20 or 30 years”.

A desire thwarted according to him “by the Machiavellianism of the left and the stupidity of the right”. “I am the catalyst, I am just that,” he said.

Eric Zemmour explained in these terms the rallies he has been the subject of in recent days in front of our cameras: “It is first and foremost a campaign of friendship and camaraderie”. He returned to his relationship with Gilbert Collard: “He’s a friend. We’ve been exchanging ideas, books for a very long time”.

He refuted the idea that his allies made opportunistic choices: “Sourness is a feeling, the calculation is reasoned. (…) Some make calculations and choose their party before their country. There, it is the choice of convictions and of France”.

Eric Zemmour has, as planned, started his day with a morning stroll through the streets of Cannes. Speaking very briefly in front of the press in the middle of the crowd, he was delighted with the latest rallies in his favor. “You see, there is Guillaume, Jérôme and now there may also be Gilbert”, he observed, referring to the arrivals in his team of Guillaume Peltier, defector from LR, and RN MEPs Jérôme Rivière and Gilbert Collard, before being carried away by his order service.

Louis Aliot continued to develop his analysis of the defections of RN executives in favor of Eric Zemmour – we have identified three in three days. Eric Zemmour is a “magnet to embittered and jealous”, he judged. “Electorally, it doesn’t matter much,” he said, denouncing personalities who had come “to take advantage of the RN and its mandates and who will now find that the grass is greener in the meadow. to the side”.

The RN mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot, commented on the defections within the RN in favor of Eric Zemmour on our antenna this Saturday morning. He particularly dwelled on the case of Gilbert Collard:

“I’m a bit at the origin of his arrival at the RN. I think he should not have been at the RN for three years already. At the last Europeans, he had blackmailed him by threatening to leave for Dupont-Aignan and unfortunately we gave in to his blackmail”, he asked, assuring that this departure does not “surprise him”.

“Obviously, in politics, he is in nomadism,” he pointed out again.

Emmanuel Macron would easily come out on top in the first round of the presidential election if it took place on Sunday, with 25% of the voting intentions, ahead of Valérie Pécresse (LR) and Marine Le Pen (RN) tied at 15.5%, according to a new poll on Saturday.

In the second round, the outgoing president would win ahead of each of these two candidates, according to this Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey made for The world, the Jean Jaurès Foundation and the Cevipof with more than 12,500 people, and going in the same direction as many other recent surveys. Emmanuel Macron would thus obtain 54% of the votes against Valérie Pécresse (46%), and 57% against Marine Le Pen (43%).

With 13% in the first round, Eric Zemmour (Reconquest) remade, compared to other recent polls, part of his delay on the two women. On the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI) would top the voting intentions with 8%, ahead of Yannick Jadot (EELV, 7%), the former minister of François Hollande Christiane Taubira (5%) and Anne Hidalgo (PS , 3.5%).

Survey carried out from January 14 to 17 with a sample of 12,542 people registered on the electoral lists. Margin of error between 0.2 and 0.9 points.

After suffering this week the departure of Jérôme Rivière, the boss of their MEPs, towards the presidential campaign of Eric Zemmour, the executives of the National Rally must therefore face a new defection: that of Gilbert Collard.

And according to the elements collected by the political service of RMC, the lawyer’s initiative has aroused widespread anger in the ranks of Marine Le Pen’s training. “Amoral”, “ingrate”, here are some of the comments made by the entourage of the presidential candidate. “I saw him twice at the RN in five years”, says yet another who believes that it will “not change much”.

Marine Le Pen has not yet reacted to this blow but she had commented the day before during a press conference on the trajectory of Jérôme Rivière and activist Damien Rieu: “I do not respect duplicity. (…) I think that in politics too one can behave uprightly.”

The arithmetic of the polls is also favorable to Marine Le Pen, who dominates her rival Eric Zemmour in the opinion polls. His rival hopes to reverse the trend with these war prizes.

MEP Gilbert Collard is leaving the ranks of the National Rally to join Eric Zemmour’s presidential team.

Already implied yesterday in a video where he indicated that he was preparing to “bathe” in a “small river” (a nod to his colleague in the European Parliament, Jérôme Rivière, who also decided to put himself at the service of the former columnist), called “the Rubicon”, his rallying will be official this Saturday. He must indeed participate in the meeting of Eric Zemmour in Cannes.