On BFMTV last July, Bruno Retailleau refused to join a coalition with the presidential camp the day after the legislative elections. This Friday, September 20, he is tipped to become Minister of the Interior.
Has Bruno Retailleau succumbed to the sirens of the Ministry of the Interior and the cap of “France’s top cop”? The name of the leader of the Republican senators was proposed this Thursday, September 19 by Michel Barnier to Emmanuel Macron to succeed Gérald Darmanin at Place Beauvau. The elected official from Vendée, a loyal supporter of François Fillon, has nevertheless rejected several times the idea of an agreement between his party and the presidential camp.
During the campaign for the second round of the 2022 presidential election, Bruno Retailleau even refused to choose between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. “I will vote blank because the right is not soluble in Macronism,” he declared.
Bruno Retailleau hammered home the line defined by his political family: “No vote for Marine Le Pen, no agreement with Emmanuel Macron.”
He did not believe in a coalition with the presidential camp.
A position that was still his the day after the second round of the legislative elections. On BFMTV, the leader of the LR senators said he refused a “coalition” or a “government” with the presidential camp.
On Tuesday July 23, Bruno Retailleau assured us: the “Republican Right” does not wish “neither enter the government nor a coalition“, preferring a “legislative pact”.
“We are putting on the table very concrete proposals, common sense, but which we have never had the courage in France to be able to test,” explained Bruno Retailleau.
The senator then explained that the Republican Right would vote for these 13 pieces of legislation if the presidential camp took them up, but that it would not be a coalition pact. “When we say ‘coalition’, we mean a coalition that would go from the left to the right through the centre, that would be ‘at the same time’ and that would be a failure,” he said.
Government: Barnier’s list – 20/09
Regarding an alliance solely between the Republicans and Macron’s party, Bruno Retailleau estimated that it would be quickly overturned because “that only makes 220 deputies, very, very far from the 289 deputies required for an absolute majority.”
But in two months, the position of the Republicans has changed significantly since, according to our information, nine LR ministers will be appointed by Emmanuel Macron on the proposal of Michel Barnier.
The leader of the right-wing group in the National Assembly, Laurent Wauquiez, refused to go to Bercy, but gave his support to the Prime Minister “in his difficult mission”. “But it cannot be the continuation of ‘at the same time’, we need a break with the past years”, he warned, believing that “the parliamentary groups will have an essential role to ensure this”.
