Emmanuel Macron affirmed Tuesday in the Council of Ministers that the far right should not be fought “by moral arguments”, thus distinguishing himself from Elisabeth Borne who had considered that the National Rally was the “heir of Pétain”.
“The President of the Republic never reframes the Prime Minister in the Council of Ministers”, assured the Elysée to AFP, to minimize this new dissonance between the two heads of the executive while speculation is rife on a next government reshuffle.
And yet his remarks, reported by participants, may appear as a clarification.
“The fight against the far right no longer involves moral arguments,” pleaded the head of state. According to him, “we must discredit” the RN “by the substance and the inconsistencies”, “by the concrete”, rather than by “moral postures” or “words from the 90s that no longer work”.
“You will not be able to make millions of French people who voted for the far right believe that they are fascists,” he said again.
Emmanuel Macron intervened as the exchanges focused on Sunday’s local elections in Spain, where the far right has established itself as the third political force and could govern with the right in many regions.
If there is no direct reference to it, they intervene just after the interview broadcast on Sunday by Radio J, in which Elisabeth Borne attacked the RN.
“You should not trivialize your ideas, your ideas are always the same. So now, the National Rally is putting the forms in it, but I continue to think that it is a dangerous ideology”, judged the head of government.
She considered that the party was “heir” of Philippe Pétain, head of the Vichy regime who collaborated with Nazi Germany, and warned that a victory for Marine Le Pen in the presidential election of 2027 was “a real threat”.
These criticisms, denounced as “infamous and unworthy” by the patron saint of RN deputies, were variously appreciated within Macronie.
“Reminder injections are always useful,” Renaissance MP Marc Ferracci told the press on Tuesday. “Now there are other ways to fight” the far right, in particular by pointing out the “incompetence” and “amateurism” of its proposals, he added.
Not everyone around the Council of Ministers table saw Emmanuel Macron’s words as a “frontal attack” against Elisabeth Borne. “We have a lack of arguments” to counter the RN, believes a government source, deploring the use of “the same arguments as in 2002”, when Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front, had for the first time led his camp in the second round of the presidential election.
The head of state had felt in the past that the best way to push back the far right was to obtain concrete results.
“Marine Le Pen will come” to power “if we do not know how to respond to the challenges of the country and if we install a habit of lying or denial of reality”, he said at the end of April in Le Parisien. “If we manage to win the reindustrialization project, we will get people out of despair, misery and anger. If we manage to win the project of ecology, order, the fight for our public services , we will have people who will return to the republican field”, he had advanced.
This apparent divergence on the best way to counter the far right comes as Emmanuel Macron and Elisabeth Borne have already had conflicting messages on the attitude to adopt towards the unions after the adoption of the pension reform.
It occurs especially in the middle of the “hundred days” decreed by the president to relaunch his five-year term. He promised to take stock of it on July 14, seeming to concede only a reprieve to his Prime Minister, to whom he renewed his confidence only lip service.
After the Council of Ministers, they had lunch together at the Elysée, for their weekly tete-a-tete.
05/30/2023 18:04:02 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
