Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the RN deputy at the heart of the budgetary storm

With the wave of his hand, he dismisses the assessment of the Montaigne Institute, which puts the cost of his project at 71 billion per year. It does not even take into account the analyzes of the Nobel Prize winner in economics, Jean Tirole, and the former professor at MIT, Olivier Blanchard, who judge that the application of Marine Le Pen's program would lead to a severe debt crisis. French, which would require “the RN in power has to choose between unprecedented austerity and recourse to the International Monetary Fund”.

No matter, the deputy for the Somme is where he always dreamed of being. At the heart of political life. A Holy Grail for this graduate of Sciences-Po and Essec, who has long been champing at the bit in the shadow of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.

Between the ages of 26 and 34, he was the right-hand man of the deputy mayor of Yerres (Essonne) and a member of his Debout La France party. “He supervised communication, the publication of the municipal newspaper, relations with elected officials, describes Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, but he absolutely did not intervene on the merits of issues relating to public expenditure or local taxes. »

At the end of 2020, the young apparatchik slammed the door of the small sovereignist movement to join the RN. A paid choice. Six months later, he was elected regional councilor for Hauts-de-France on Sébastien Chenu's list, although he had only received 2.4% of the votes under the colors of Debout La France six years previously. In 2022, he became the deputy director of Marine Le Pen's presidential campaign, then inherited a golden constituency in the Somme and won his first mandate as a deputy.

From now on, Jean-Philippe Tanguy is a key cog in the far-right party. On September 14, it was he who presented the new version of Marine Le Pen's economic project during the RN's parliamentary re-entry.

A month later, it was again he who revealed the counter-Budget of the RN deputies to the press. “He is the point of reference for setting the group's positions as the budgetary debates progress, confides an RN deputy from the Finance Committee. He very regularly feeds the WhatsApp thread of RN deputies with arguments on the economy and energy. »

But Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella are holding the reins short. In the middle of the budgetary debate, the president of the RN managed to correct the situation on the taxation of capital income and vote against the increase in the single flat-rate levy.

The elimination of the tax loophole for shipowners, which it had carried since last year, was also abandoned. “He speaks a lot in the hemicycle and in committee, describes MP LR Marie-Christine Dalloz, her neighbor in the Finance Committee, but it is very difficult to know if he has real autonomy compared to Marine Le Pen. »

The right arm of the leader of the far right in the Assembly, the very powerful Renaud Labaye, constantly communicates with him to determine arbitrations. As a sign of a desire for independence, Jean-Philippe Tanguy created his microparty, L'Avenir français, which aims to be “Gaullist and sovereignist” and counts among its members several other far-right deputies.

For his colleagues from other political sides, Jean-Philippe Tanguy appears above all to be very unpredictable. “Regularly, he loses his temper, he goes off into uncontrolled flights of fancy,” observes Macronist MP Jean-René Cazeneuve.

“There’s a wacky side to him, you never know which comes out on top: technical or comic strips,” adds Renaissance elected official Mathieu Lefèvre. One month after his election, on July 22, 2022, his exclamation “Silence for France!” » launched at the Insoumis made an impression. Ten days before, after a press conference, he had called Emmanuel Macron a “good for nothing” and claimed that the Rothschild bank had hired him in the past because “he knew how to solicit the homoerotic aspirations of a certain number of executives”.

The day before the appointment of Michel Barnier, he also described the future Prime Minister as “fossil” et “of one of the stupidest politicians that the V^e Republic gave ». Before Marine Le Pen describes the new tenant of Matignon as“respectful man” and accepts his nomination. “I shouldn’t have expressed myself like that,” Jean-Philippe Tanguy then had to apologize. Three months later, he enjoys his revenge.