The head of France’s conservative Les Républicains has resigned following a humiliating defeat in the May 26 European elections, with many questioning whether the party can survive the squeeze between Macron’s centre-right and Le Pen’s far-right, reports FRANCE 24.
The recriminations against the leader of Les Républicains (LR), Laurent Wauquiez, started pouring in as soon as it emerged that the party mustered only 8.5 percent of the vote in the European elections – its worst ever result in a national poll, and a precipitous decline from the 20 percent its candidate François Fillon won in the first round of the 2017 presidential elections.
On the evening of May 26, Rachida Dati, a newly elected LR MEP and a former cabinet minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, took to TV to pronounce the party’s result a “catastrophe”. The next morning, Wauquiez’s main internal critic Valérie Pécresse, the moderate head of the Paris region, said she would step down if she were in his position. Soon, an array of LR politicians had lined up to explicitly demand his resignation.
Le Figaro, the newspaper of France’s traditional right, went even further, titling a video debate on its website: “Les Républicains: condemned to disappear?”
Finally bowing to the pressure, the embattled leader announced live on French television on Sunday that he would step down as party chief. “Victories are collective, defeats are solitary,” Wauquiez said on TF1's flagship news programme. “The right needs to rebuild and I do not intend to be an obstacle.”