While the political world is waiting for the announcement of the future Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, who held the post from 2017 to 2020, surprised everyone on Tuesday evening with the official announcement of his candidacy for the next presidential election.
It is above all the moment chosen by the president of Horizons, who is part of the presidential coalition, which surprises and provokes reactions. “Showing individualism, talking about an upcoming election (…) does not seem really appropriate to me today”, regretted the leader of the Macronist senators, François Patriat, known to be close to the President of the Republic, on LCI.
“In the midst of the crisis, he only thinks of himself,” lambasted the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau, still on LCI. At the RN, Laurent Jacobelli had no other words: “Édouard Philippe talks to us about himself at a time when the French would like us to talk to them a little about themselves,” he denounced on BFMTV.
For Bruno Retailleau, interviewed on BFMTV, the timing is bad. “France has just been dissolved. There is no majority in the National Assembly. There is no Prime Minister. There is no government. There is no budget on the table, contrary to usual. And we see someone coming out of the woodwork for 2027,” lamented the leader of the LR senators.
But beyond the moment, he sees it as a sign of political change: this sequence “clearly marks the end of Macronism,” he added.
An analysis shared by the first secretary of the Socialist Party. “We can clearly see that this former presidential majority is completely disintegrating,” Olivier Faure said on TF1, before adding: “The knives are already drawn. And seeing that a former Prime Minister of Emmanuel Macron is already imagining an early presidential election shows how much confidence he has in what is going to happen and in the president who once appointed him.”
