At the executive office of the National Rally (RN), on Tuesday, September 10, a well-known name from the French far right was invited, that of a former member of the house: Philippe Vardon. And what was said there did not augur a reconciliation between the former pillar of the French identity movement and the party of Marine Le Pen, who no longer wishes to see Philippe Vardon, either near or far.
The latter left Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête! party the day after the European elections, in the luggage of Marion Maréchal, whose campaign he had led (5.5% of the vote). He imagined that he would discover the corridors of the Palais-Bourbon for the first time at the age of 44, in the shoes of the parliamentary attaché of the three deputies close to Marion Maréchal, elected with the support of the RN during the legislative elections in July. According to our information, this will not be the case.
Marine Le Pen did not appreciate at all discovering that the deputies Eddy Casterman, Anne Sicard and Thibaut Monnier had chosen the Niçois to accompany them. As soon as she returned from vacation, at the end of August, the triple presidential candidate is said to have directly expressed her anger to the third, a former federal secretary and regional councilor at the National Front (former name of the RN), furious to have learned of this recruitment through the press.
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Central role in the 2017 presidential campaign
If Marine Le Pen’s request was not clear enough, the executive office of her party confirmed the dilemma imposed on the three “RN associates”: leave the group, or drop Philippe Vardon before the start of the parliamentary session, scheduled for Tuesday 1is October. Contacted by The WorldPhilippe Vardon assures that it was agreed that his contract would end at this deadline – contrary to parliamentary practice. “It was planned from the beginning that I would install the teams in the first few months.”but not beyond that, explains the opposition municipal councilor in Nice, confirming his departure from the Palais-Bourbon “from here [à] two weeks ». Then he counts “switch to the structuring of the political initiative around Marion [Maréchal] »But no ” to fall over ” in the European Parliament, as a collaborator of the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, elected in Brussels last June.
To replace him in the National Assembly, the three “related” deputies will not be able to hire the influencer Damien Rieu, another close friend of Marion Maréchal who has been subject to the same ban by the RN. The co-founder of the dissolved small group Génération identitaire had been a parliamentary assistant to MEP (RN) Philippe Olivier and a candidate in the 2021 departmental elections under the Le Penist colors, before joining Reconquête!. Philippe Vardon, for his part, had played a central role in Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign in 2017, and had carried the RN colors during the 2020 municipal elections and the 2021 regional elections, while sitting on the national office of the far-right party. His star had faded after the defeat of Thierry Mariani in the regional elections in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, where he was campaign director. Until his departure from the RN for Reconquête!, in 2022.
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