The strategy adopted by former president Nicolas Sarkozy is coming under increasing attack from many in own right-wing party Les Républicains and among allies on the political right after the recent regional elections in France. His espousal of hard-line right-wing policies has been blamed by many for the rise in support for the Front National, which despite failing to win control of a region last weekend recorded its biggest ever share of the popular vote. Meanwhile Sarkozy's decision to remove former minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, from her position as number two in the party in the New Year has been publicly criticized by senior figures.
The attack on the party boss's political priorities was led by Xavier Bertand, the Republican candidate who won the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region last Sunday after the Socialist Party candidate withdrew to ensure the Front National could not win. Bertrand, who as long ago as 2012 had himself thrown his hat into the ring for the Right's primary election, was scathing in an interview on France 2 television on Monday December 14th about his party's response to the rise of the far-right. “Look at the spectacle of my political family, where the only response given to that is the Republicans' organogram or the date of the primary,” he said. “My god! They have to wake up or we're heading towards a political catastrophe.”
Bertrand then spelled out how the tough campaign in his region had opened his eyes politically. “This campaign that I've conducted for nearly a year, where I've come across people's anger, the feeling of abandonment … the poverty, it's been like a punch right in the face for me. And that has changed forever my way of doing politics,” he said. “It forces you to question yourself. That's the reason why I have decided to devote myself fully to the region. I don't feel it is justifiable for me to take part in this primary because I was a minister and I've heard the message through the whole campaign: 'You were a minister, what did you do?' The political class has failed for the last 30 years. There was certainly a collective fault. I'm a part of that political class.”
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This form of realisation may seem surprising. But Bertrand is not alone in his views on the Right. The other Republican candidate who won a region – in his case Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA) – after a socialist candidate withdrew was Christian Estrosi and he has also ruled out standing in the Right's primary. “Today that's not the issue,” he told Nice-Matin newspaper. “We have to think about a new political model to respond to the expectations of a French people sickened by political quarrels, a model in which when one gives one's word it is firmly kept.”
In fact the majority of major figures involved in the Sarkozy administration from 2007 to 2012 have offered a mea culpa for mistakes committed. And the catastrophic results of the first round of voting in the regional elections, in which the Front National came top in six regions, seems to have had the effect of an electric shock on many elected representatives of the Republicans (formerly the UMP). Apart from Nicolas Sarkozy himself and his core supporters, most senior party figures are now calling for change. “An old political world is dying,” Bruno Le Maire, a former minister and a rival of Sarkozy for the presidency of the party, told Le Figaro. He was extremely blunt about his own party too. “Does our political family stir passions? No.” Sarkozy's current woes have not been made any better by a new poll suggesting that if the presidential election were held today he would not go through to the second round.
The main charge against Sarkozy is that he is taking the party ever further to the right. The former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, for example, who is standing down as president of the party's national council, noted that “running behind the Front National is not the right strategy”. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is being axed as number two in the party, said that “you don't turn around France with reactionaries”. Bruno Le Maire said: “The radicalisation of the party is leading us into a wall. It will turn us into a sect, which won't allow us to win the 2017 presidential election.”
Christian Estrosi, meanwhile, was quite explicit about what he thought of the leadership's strategy. In an interview with Mediapart between the two rounds of voting he said: “Every time that we try to up the ante to the right, we lend support to the Front National. I've said for a long time that an escalation towards the right will not hold back the phenomenon of the Front National.” And the head of the Republicans in the Nord département or county in the north of France, Jean-René Lecerf, has decided to leave the party because of its rightwards drift.
Yet, despite the growing list of opponents within his own party, Nicolas Sarkozy remains convinced he is heading in the correct direction. His view is that the Right's ideological gaze should remain firmly fixed on those “questions that worry the French people”, at the top of which he puts law and order, immigration and the “assertion of our identity”.
To head off criticism Sarkozy has scheduled a meeting of the party's national council on February 13th and 14th to clarify the party's line. But many critics in the party see this as a sterile exercise. “It will just be brainstorming and will keep a few people busy for a short period,” said one party official. Indeed, those in the party who have their sights set on the nomination for the 2017 presidential election have no intention of being dictated to on policy. They already have a precise idea of the campaign they will conduct in their attempt to be the Right's candidate.
Indeed, as it is seemingly impossible for a proper debate to take part inside the party itself while Nicolas Sarkozy is in charge – as the removal of Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet shows – that debate will instead take place during the primary election. There was a discussion at last Monday's policy committee to bring that election forward; it is currently scheduled for November 20th and 27th, 2016. However, changing the dates would mean re-writing the party's charter and then voting on it at the policy committee. Given that three of the main candidates in the primary - Alain Juppé, Bruno Le Maire and former prime minister François Fillon – are opposed to such a move it seems to have little chance of success.
For the moment the Republicans' centre-right electoral ally the UDI, is not saying whether it will take part in the Right's presidential primary election. That decision will be put to the UDI's members at its next conference in March 2016.
In the meantime Mediapart takes a look at the main candidates for that primary, both declared and undeclared. Under the current timetable they have until September 21st, 2016, to garner the support and nominations they need to take part in the contest, which will see Nicolas Sarkozy pitted against the rest of the French Right.
- Nicolas Sarkozy
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The former head of state was originally reluctant about holding a primary to choose the Right's presidential candidate. However, he eventually bowed to pressure from opponents within Les Républicains. “[It] will take place, I've made a commitment,” he told Le Figaro on December 11th. The calculation being made by Sarkozy, whose own candidature excites enthusiasm among only a loyal hard core of party activists, is simple: the more restricted the primary's electorate, the greater chance he has of winning the process. This explains why as recently as October he was still trying to query the number of voting stations stipulated by the party's charter. “Ten thousand voting stations for the primary is not realistic. That needs to be reviewed,” he said, suggesting it would be better to remove nearly 2,000 of them.
However, aware that it would be difficult to go back on a figure approved as recently as April by the Republicans' policy committee, Nicolas Sarkozy has moved to plan B. On Monday December 14th, the day after the regional elections, the president of the party left it to three loyal lieutenants - Christian Jacob, Éric Ciotti and Luc Chatel – to query the planned date for the primary election. This trio urged that the primary should be held before the summer of 2016 and not November, arguing that it was impossible for the party to endure eleven more months in which senior party figures battle against each other. Bringing forward the vote would also be a good way of undermining the preparations for the primary and perhaps reducing the number of participants.
But the Sarkozy supporters quickly came up against fierce opposition to the idea. “We must not have a rushed primary taking place amid general panic,” warned Alain Juppé. In the end the former president decided to refer the matter to the policy committee, with the assent of the primary organising committee and the authority whose task it will be to supervise it. “In other words, the idea has already been buried,” said a close ally of Bruno Le Maire. But Nicolas Sarkozy is still a resourceful politician, and he is now trying to pre-empt the ideological debate on the right while appearing simply to be organising it. And from January he will also be able to call on Laurent Wauquiez, the newly-elected right-wing president of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, who is replacing Kosciusko-Morizet as the Republicans' number two.
- Alain Juppé
The mayor of Bordeaux's position was weakened by the regional elections results. His deputy Virginie Calmels was beaten by ten points in the new Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes region by socialist Alain Rousset. Moreover Juppé, who has long been a champion of an alliance with centrist parties, including the MoDem, saw centre-right UDI candidates such as Philippe Vigier in the Centre-Loire Valley and François Sauvadet in Burgundy-France Comté fail to make an impression. Yet Juppé, who was prime minister under president Jacques Chirac, still holds an important advantage when it comes to the primary: for many on the right and centre-right he still represents the candidate most likely to beat Nicolas Sarkozy.
So far the mayor of Bordeaux has fought with kid gloves on. He has avoided openly attacking Nicolas Sarkozy so as not to risk angering party activists who are still supporters of the former head of state. “There's no point in angering someone who one will need later,” one Juppé supporter told Mediapart between the two rounds of the regional election. However, this approach does not prevent the mayor of Bordeaux from assert his differences with his arch rival when the occasion arises. Thus he recently asserted that in relation to the primary election “the political direction must be put before the largest number of electors”. He also told RTL radio that he considers it “a shame to deprive oneself of [Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet's] talents”.
Meanwhile Alain Juppé continues on his marathon campaign. While he awaits the publication in January of his second book on policy ideas – an interview with journalist Natacha Polony on issues such as justice, defence and security – the veteran politician has been travelling across France. His supporters refuse to say how many elected representatives have flocked to his cause. Few names circulate, apart from Members of Parliament Édouard Philippe, Benoist Apparu and Hervé Gaymard, and senator and mayor of Angers in west France, Christophe Béchu. “That's mainly because there aren't many more,” sniff Sarkozy supporters.
- Bruno Le Maire
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The MP from the Eure département or county in Normandy is also continuing his campaign, using the idea of “renewal” as his main theme. “My analysis of the seriousness of the political situation and the need for renewal dates from 2012,” he told Le Figaro on December 15th. “I drew the consequences of that by standing against Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency of the UMP [editor's note, now Les Républicains] in 2014. I estimated then that a new political offering was needed. I believe that more than ever today.” Le Maire's modest project is attracting more and more sympathisers in the party, something likely to irritate Sarkozy, for whom “renewal is also about loyalty”.
But it will take more than the disapproval of the former president to undermine his former agriculture minister, whose self-confidence sometimes borders on self-importance. Le Maire told RTL on Monday December 14th: “It's up to us to understand the thirst of the French people for political renewal. It's up to us to hear this message: 'When will you have the courage to renew your political offering?' Because by always putting forward the same faces, the same speeches, the same proposals, we're making it easier for the Front National.” For some months now Bruno Le Maire has been thinking that the primary would take place between “the young” - meaning him – and “the old” - meaning everyone else. However, the emergence of two other younger figures as possible candidates, Laurent Wauquiez and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (see next page) may change the dynamics of the contest.
- François Fillon
Though he is not at the forefront of many people's minds when it comes to the primary, Nicolas Sarkozy's former prime minister believes in his chances as strongly as ever. For many months François Fillon has been touting around his ideas for the future. “I've a plan to make France a winner,” he repeated again on regional election night. “We must offer the French people an alternative policy that is based on a precise, serious and credible plan,” he told RTL the day after the elections. “A plan to break with the past, of radical change.”
His rival Bruno Le Maire counter-attacked in Le Figaro. “Let's not recycle this expression 'break with the past' [editor's note, in French the word employed was 'rupture' which was used by Sarkozy in his 2007 presidential campaign] which has been over-used and which, unfortunately, was never followed by actions that the French people might have excepted.”
Though he is mocked by many, François Fillon refuses to be deflected from his objective. Paradoxically it is he who, on paper at least, emerged best from the regional elections where three of the winners, Valérie Pécresse in Greater Paris, Bruno Retailleau in the Pays-de-Loire in west France and Philippe Richert in Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine in the east, are supporters of the former PM.
- Laurent Wauquiez and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
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They are of similar age, have a similar background and the same ambitions. But these two politicians have a radically different vision of what values the Right should put forward. Laurent Wauquiez prevailed in the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region on a far-right agenda, which helped Nicolas Sarkozy vindicate his own right-wing strategy. By way of thanks, Sarkozy has now nominated his former European affairs minister as the Republicans' number two, having axed Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. But the MP and mayor of Le Puy-en-Velay in south-central France has a reputation among some for political treachery. “You can't really trust him,” says an ally of Sarkozy, who fears that Wauquiez's success in the regional elections might encourage him to stand in the primary.
The air of mistrust is made greater by the fact that Wauquiez still meets with Patrick Buisson, the controversial former presidential advisor who was behind the hard-right stance adopted by Nicolas Sarkozy in his unsuccessful 2012 election campaign. “I decided not to stop seeing him because everyone was attacking him,” Wauquiez told the LCP parliamentary channel in the spring of 2015. “I am steadfast. I'm not cowardly, unlike some who behave as if they no longer know him yet who courted him when he was powerful.” This situation is becoming more and more worrying for Sarkozy. For since being disowned by him, Buisson's sole ambition now is to stop the former president from getting re-elected in 2017.
Standing as a candidate in the primary to exact revenge is also the threat apparently posed by Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (often known as NKM), since she was very publicly removed as the party's number two for not agreeing with Sarkozy on strategy. NKM, an MP in the Essonne département near Paris, is now making much of her own political convictions. “To think that the party gets stronger by purging it is an old Stalinist idea,” she said on Monday December 14th, as she left the party's police committee meeting. The following morning, on France Info radio, she went even further: “What's going to happen next? Are we going to get rid of everyone who doesn't agree, Alain Juppé, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Benoist Apparu? And the activists who don't agree, are we not going to invite them to meetings any more? And replace them with what, with people who are standing to attention? Is that a modern political party?” she asked.
Kosciusko-Morizet is now seriously thinking about standing in the primary election. “It's a question that arises, what happened in the regional elections has moved me closer to this idea,” she said. But her as yet vague desire risks coming up against a rather more solid hurdle: how will she get enough backers? “They tell me she is going to stand. Hah! You need 20 parliamentarians [editor's note, to support your candidature] and she only has one: herself,” mocked one Sarkozy supporter in the autumn. It is certainly true that no other parliamentarian attended her traditional post-summer holidays political gathering at the end of August. “Nathalie only exists because Sarkozy wanted her to exist,” say some supporters of the former president.
- Nadine Morano
Having been ditched from the regional elections campaigns because of her comments about France being a “white race” country, ex-minister and one-time Sarkozy loyalist Nadine Morano has opened up hostilities against the former president. However, back in September she had already made clear that she was considering taking part in the primary. Many, including Sarkozy, see this move by Morano as nothing other than a desire to “exist politically”. A party official told Mediapart in October: “She was simply disappointed not to have been nominated as a vice-president of LR [editor's note, the Republicans].” However, that does not mean that rivals do not take the former minister's potential candidature seriously. “Nadine remains very popular with the activists,” says one.
- Jean-François Copé
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Jean-François Copé, François Fillon's number one enemy, the man whom the former prime minister thinks “stole” the presidency of the UMP from him in 2012, has resurfaced in recent months. “He never really went away,” insists a member of the Republicans' policy committee, where the MP and mayor of Meaux, east of Paris, makes regular interventions. Indeed, Copé may have kept out of the media limelight since he was forced to quit as head of the UMP (now the Republicans) over the Bygmalion scandal but he remains a serious political player. Last Monday, December 14th, for example, he tackled Nicolas Sarkozy about the need to set up “consultative assemblies open to all French people”. He, too, believes that the rise of the Front National vote in the regional elections was a “massive warning” ahead of the 2017 presidential elections.
Copé was cheered by the fact that at his post-summer political gathering at Châteaurenard n the south of France last August some 40 parliamentarians turned up. And at the end of January he will be publishing a book of policy ideas under the title Le Sursaut français ('The French Jolt'). Many in the opposition party see this book as the launching of Copé's candidature in the primary.
- Jean-Frédéric Poisson and Hervé Mariton
Opposition figures who backed the protests against the legalisation of gay marriages are also likely to feature in the primary. In mid-September Jean-Frédéric Poisson, an MP and president of former minister Christine Bouton's Christian Democrat party the PCD, used the liberal-conservative magazine Valeurs actuelles to announce his candidacy. “The repetition of the same speeches coming from the same people produces the same dead end! The French people expect something else,” he said. As Poisson would be standing under the banner of the PCD he would not bound by the rules governing Republican candidates about requiring 20 official backers.
Another MP prominent in his opposition to the gay marriage legislation, Hervé Mariton, may also be a candidate in the primary. He told Mediapart that he wanted to bring forward “clear propositions” without falling back into the “eternal discussions that trouble the Right”. He said: “At the national council [editor's note, in February 2016] we're going to talk about the questions 'Who are we?' and 'What do we want?' It's an interesting debate but, well, we've had it for 20 years!” The MP was also a candidate to be the president of the UMP as it then was in 2014, and at the time he promised that he would not take part in the primary. It make be that in his new book Le Printemps des libertés ('The Springtime of Freedoms') that he is about to publish he will explain his change of heart.
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter