The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, announced that he is leaving Les Républicains. A surprise? Not really. For a long time, there had been tension in the increasingly distant and critical relationship between the Mayor of Nice and “his” party.
In fact, it hadn’t really been “his” party since 2017 when he called for a vote for Emmanuel Macron in the first round instead of the LR candidate François Fillon. Then, again, by founding the movement “La France Audacieuse,” in connection with other centrist and right-wing mayors.
Before calling on the Republicans, due to the lack of valuable candidates, to unite with the President of the Republic’s candidacy in 2022. The support of LREM for Renaud Muselier for the June regional elections (of which he was certainly one of the inspirations) and the resulting controversies could only widen the gap between LR and him, leading to a divorce. Besides, after the mayor of Toulon, Hubert Falco, announced this Wednesday, May 5, his departure from LR, could Christian Estrosi do differently?
So it is done: he announced in turn that he is leaving the party.
In this interview, he denounces, “the drift of a faction that seems to have taken the party’s leadership hostage” to derail the alliance project between LREM and LR in the regional elections in Paca. While he says he’s an “always been a Gaullist,” Christian Estrosi laments that he has “never experienced such violence in (his) party” as during the discussions around this issue since Sunday, where he claims to have been labeled, along with Mr. Falco, as “malicious.”
We will see the impact of this decision next, firstly in the composition of the list of candidates supporting Renaud Muselier, in which Christian Estrosi, elected president of the Region in 2015 and Deputy President after having left the place to Renaud Muselier to return two years later to the City Hall of Nice, was supposed to be the top candidate in Alpes-Maritimes.
“With my friend Christian Estrosi, we won the regional elections in 2015 by standing up to the FN together,” Renaud Muselier tweeted Thursday evening. “No one criticizes our record! We will win this election in 2021 and continue our action.”
With my friend @cestrosi, Mayor of #Nice and President of the @MetropoleNCA, we won the regional elections in 2015 by standing up to the FN together. No one criticizes our record! We will win this election in 2021 and continue our action for #NotreRegiondabord. pic.twitter.com/6y8cOufJU4
— Renaud Muselier (@RenaudMuselier) May 6, 2021
Then on a national level, where La France Audacieuse or another could be a rallying point for all the dissidents (and there are many) from LR, whose increasingly right-leaning line resembles that of Marine Le Pen.
Given the political line and mindset of the current leaders, the departure of a number of territorial barons (the “presidential” Xavier Bertrand and Valérie Pécresse have already taken a step back in recent years by creating their political movement), the risk of LR fragmentation is increasingly present.
Probably happy to have a free hand in the party’s management in Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti risks not seeing his ambition realized: to return to power after siphoning off the Le Penist votes in the name of “the capacity to govern,” which, according to him, is the only distinction that separates the two parties.
An experienced politician, he should know that democracy is also the law of numbers and that to win elections, one must be the majority at the polls. PS docet!
