Pécresse rallies French Right as she pledges to fight wokeism
VALERIE PECRESSE, the French presidential candidate, promised “not to bend” to “wokeist” beliefs at her first rally yesterday.
“A few weeks ago they thought we were buried, but the Right is back and it will be Emmanuel Macron or us [who wins],” she told a crowd of 1,000 Les Républicains (LR) officials in Paris, after a larger public rally to kick off her campaign was cancelled because of Covid.
“There is no question of leaving the future of France in the hands of immobilism or extremism”, said Ms Pécresse.
The 54-year old Paris regional chief was once dismissed as a “blonde bourgeoise” from Versailles but has rocketed from rank outsider to serious threat to Emmanuel Macron’s re-election chances after being chosen as the Gaullist party’s first female presidential candidate last weekend, with one poll suggesting she could beat the president in next April’s election.
As the rise of Pécresse breathed new life into the presidential hopes of the French Right, Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris and presidential candidate for the once-mighty Socialist Party, was mounting a desperate attempt to save her camp from political oblivion.
Polls suggest the 62-year-old could muster as little as 3 per cent in the first round of the elections.
The only way to avoid a sinking of the Left, she said, was to run a “popular primary” to choose one runner among the seven current candidates on the Left, from the Greens to the Communists.
But minutes after her call to join forces, Ms Hidalgo received a categorical “non” from rival Leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is polling on around 9 per cent. “With this kind of comedy, we end up turning everyone off,” he said.
Yannick Jadot, the Green leader, on around 7 per cent, dismissed the idea as a “sleight of hand”.
‘A few weeks ago they thought we were buried, but the Right is back and it will be Macron or us [who wins]’
While both men are faring slightly better than Ms Hidalgo, the truth is that, four months ahead of elections, the French Left combined only accounts for around 25 per cent of voting intentions, a record low, and uniting its disparate electorate appears mission impossible.
The Left has failed to rebuild since Mr Macron siphoned off a sizeable chunk of Socialists in 2017.
Despite a newly installed Social Democrat-led government in Germany, France – always essentially a conservative country – has veered further Right.
Dominique Réynié, a political scientist, pointed out that the total vote for Right-wing candidates in the first round of French presidential elections has almost always been in the majority since 1965. But the share won by the “populist Right” surged in 2017.
This time, polls suggest France’s Right-wing electorate is even more drawn to populism but the dominance of Marine Le Pen has been split by the dramatic rise of Eric Zemmour, the TV pundit known for his diatribes against immigration and Islam.
That division has opened the way in the crucial first-round vote for an electable conservative to reach the final.
Enter Ms Pécresse. After her surprise victory last Saturday, an Elabe opinion poll showed the former budget and higher education minister under Nicolas Sarkozy reaching the second round of voting – and defeating Mr Macron.
She is “Macron’s worst nightmare”, said a former colleague, and on paper the only candidate with a fighting chance of beating him in the runoff.