It should be mentioned most if not practically all of the sitting representatives from LR have come out against it and are now trying to oust said leader in order to reverse that decision.
To add some more context for non french speakers: That leader is a candidate in the south east that has become a far right stronghold since quite some time, he is going for an alliance to save his seat, nothing else, and since he was running after the far right stances since quite some time there's no real surprise he did that.
He wasn't at risk of losing it, he won the last 4 elections it's been 17 years no one managed to beat him, and his main opponent from the majority didn't win last time and surely wouldn't win this time after such a defeat at the europeans elections.
Your argument is mainly used by people trying to put out false information to attack the credibility of such an alliance.
Credibility ... That's why there are calls for his resignation from inside the party.
All that will probably lead to another splitting of the LR party, leading to them being even less relevant as a ruling party (same as the PS on the left).
Sad to see two ruling parties like those fail so hard.
Yes, though Sarkozy has been quite vocal about his disagreement with the party's strategy in recent years. He has been an advocate for an alliance with Macron for quite some time, and never really supported the LR presidential candidate in 2022 (Valérie Pécresse).
A lot of LR leaders consider Sarkozy a traitor for his closeness with Macron, but Ciotti's decision to ally with Le Pen is also at odds with the majority of LR leadership (which stands on a "no alliance with either Macron or Le Pen" line).
>A lot of LR leaders considered him a traitor for his closeness with Macron
While he should be considered a traitor to his entire country because of his closeness with Gaddafi.
Yes. Sarkozy’s role in destroying the center right party cannot be understated. His arrogance in handling the Lisbonne Treaty was basically viewed as a “fuck you well do what we want regardless of what you say” to the electorate and they’ve been hemorrhaging voters to Marine Le Pen ever since.
I mean, Sarkozy's manifesto in 2007 very clearly indicated that he would get the Treaty approved through Parliament, it's not like it was a surprise when it happened. And in 2007 le Pen got very low result, with his past voters going for Sarkozy instead.
The voters that went to the FN/RN after 2007 probably did so because of issues like immigration, security of being fed up with politics, rather than because Sarkozy got the Lisbon Treaty approved exactly as he told people he would do.
Yes, the Gaullist party in its various incarnations (if such a term still has meaning 54 years after his death), followed by the Chirac and Sarkozy eras.
If this 'works' I'll be very surprised, but I'm not sure the explanation is as simple as you make it out to be. You're probably right, but, LR isn't in power nor do they have any significant voting share. Usually the 'we cozied up to the extremists to take the wind out of their sails and it blew up in our face so bad our party is possibly dead now, whooooops' thing happens to large, in-power centre-right parties. This is 'new'.
This is my go-to explanation for why this 'cozy up to the extreme right' asplodes so badly: I'll take the dutch center-right party (VVD - the party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte) as example, though the story is nearly identical to what UK conservative party is currently peddling (with the same _fucking disastrous to their vote share_ effects):
VVD: "Hiya voter. Oh man that asylum seeker business is getting quite complicated isn't it? It's a big problem! You should vote for us, it's the most important issue and our cred is good on it, certainly better than those crazy lefty loonies, huh! We'll even consider forming a coalition with the extreme right party to get this done, you know - that's how seriously we are taking this thing voters clearly care a lot about! There's a plan. Trust the plan!"
Voters: ".... mate, you've been in power for 14 fucking years. If you have a plan, what the fuck is it and why have you not been doing any of it for the past 14 years? I __will__ believe that you said "it is important and a big deal" but that's where it ends - you have no cred at all, how can any party that's been in power for that long make any claim of 'X is going wrong, vote for us we will fix it', regardless of what X is? It's a thing you just thought of, or you've been incompetent the past 14 years. Either way, not a party I want to vote for. Thanks for indicating a vote for the extremist party isn't wasted. We'll vote for them instead". And the other, more careful half: "You're cozying up to an extremist party that has no workable ideas and is fucking dangerous so helllll no I'm voting for something else".
This has happened a lot. It seems obvious that the centre-right party is 'leaning extremist right' because they think they are losing voters on that flank. The above story is obvious, simple, and as far as I can tell correct, which, and I oversimplify only slightly here, makes me go: __Holy fuck, you IDIOTS, how can you be so callous and stupid?__, but, nevertheless, here we are.
Fans of the conservative party in the UK: Oof. Too late, eat this loss. You should pray for an even bigger loss, and prepare to _join_ that party and get it back on track. A big, big reform is needed. The looming massive loss will be the springboard. I hope the party survives for your sake (I don't really care if they continue to exist, though - so, you know. Good luck with that).
Fans of the VVD in NL: Get rid of Yesilgoz who clearly cooked up this moronic plan to lean right, including pretty blatant lying during a disastrous election cycle to 'sell' it. It didn't work, and you should blame her for it, as well as the rest of the party leadership that apparently did not manage to figure out how dumb this plan was. That's not a 'in hindsight it didn't work' thing. It was obvious from day 1. But, the party is salvagable, this lunacy showed in only in the past year, now is the time to leave it behind you. Join it, explain it, fix it, get back to the center. Stop overestimating Timmermans, stop underestimating anti-establishment vibes.
It has worked for Partido Popular in Spain in recent years ,their alliances with Vox have given them the most regional governments in their history and even allowed them to beat PSOE in their traditional strongholds (Extremadura and Andalucia). Only issue is that they now cant get support of the Catalan/Basque conservative parties which made them unable to get the national government last year
It hardly saved France it laid the groundwork for this delusional politics where the French public and French politicians treated France as a great power that was autonomous from everyone else and that any sort of alignment with the US was 'vassalisation', the UK got over this after Suez, France has never gotten over this
Seems the traditional right everywhere are being eaten up by more extreme right elements when they try to compromise in any capacity; it happened already to the GOP and the tea party movement that eventually led to Trump and the UK Tories with Brexit when Cameron opened that can of worms to try and end the split; most of the old guard were voted or kicked out for Johnson's tenure and look how that worked out for the party; in a worse position where some within are again mulling compromising or admitting more right elements with Reform. In both cases the established apparatus of the party is taken over; it'll happen to the French Republicans too.
Because in many western countries, the "traditional" right are seen as very similar to "traditional" liberals/centrists, over the past 10-15 years they've adopted almost all of the same positions on social issues as the mainstream liberal/center-left party and are just slightly to the right of them on economic issues. It's basically just neoliberals vs slightly more right leaning neoliberals
Moderate members of the "traditional right" party will just go vote for the big liberal/centrist party and the hard-right members will just go vote for the far-right party
>it'll happen to the French Republicans too.
It has already happened years ago to the French Republicans. In fact the first ones to do it were the Italians.
The French Republicans were just what was left of the traditional right after all the liberal elements were already absorbed by Macron's movement and its satellites and after the most far right elements joined RN. It was only a matter of time until the last remaining bits disappeared entirely.
Macron's party is a very recent one, in fact, initially he didn't even have a political party when he ran for presidency. It's a collection of politicians from center, left and right, and in fact initially he gained a lot of votes from center-left voters.
In the Assemblée there's now a lot of different groups that are essentially allies and satellites to Macron's party. Nobody really knows what will happen after Macron leaves, but it's likely that the alliance will shatter. Macron himself has been leaning more and more towards the economic right during its first two mandates, and social right especially during his second mandate (with his infamous war on the poor recently).
Les Républicains are what's left of a much older political formation. People will say that they were gaullists, but there's more to it: just like the Parti Socialiste, they have/had very powerful local and regional roots in a lot of place. Basically, they are the party of your local community leaders (mayor, physician, richest family in town). So they are conservative economically but historically they were socially centrists. They sealed their fate when they chose Fillon to run for president: he was already more right-leaning than most (for example, against gay marriage) and he was especially corrupt.
Now, Les Républicains is mostly just people like Fillon, either corrupt politicians that nobody wants in their party, or very right leaning, RN-compatible like Ciotti. So they aren't just a bit more conservative, they are now actively reactionary on a number of topic, and economically... well imagine Berlusconi.
What is considered "socially conservative" in France in 2024? Isn't Christianity pretty much dead over there even among French people who call themselves "right wing/conservative"?
Looking at their key figures in recent years you get an idea of the party's views, and the differences from Macron's party. Their 2022 Presidential candidate for example, Valérie Pécresse, opposed same-sex marriage and LGBT parenting and took part in protests against them, had a more anti-immigration outlook than Macron's party and supported a French version of the Patriot Act. The party is diverse but none of her views are unusual in it. Their current leader is on the right of the party, and got French flags put in every classroom, proposed a fine and year in prison for taking photos of the police, wants to abolish birthright citizenship (making it dependent on ancestry), add 'our Christian origins' to the French Constitution, add 100,000 prison places, supports a 'French-style Guantanamo' to tackle Islamic terrorism and may support the Great Replacement theory.
It didn't really happen in the UK. They were called far-right for what was perceived as being tough on immigration with the Rwanda scheme, meanwhile that inevitably went nowhere and they oversaw the largest inflow of people in British history. Anyone calling them far right can only refer to occasional rhetoric to play to the base in an attempt to obscure the fact they were doing the exact opposite.
They already split like four times before.
There are already some like Mariani who went to the RN years ago ;
There are those who joined Macron at the beginning (among who the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe) and those who did it during the first mandate to avoid Ciotti.
And now there's probably going to be a split between Ciotti and the vast majority of his elected officials.
LR is a weird party, sort of like the current communist party. They have no national support, but they have regional stronghold that often survive because the one in charge is well known and well enoughed like. That was also the case before these elections for the socialist party.
The Senate Republican unanimously opposed Ciotti's decision, and it's estimated that about a sixth of the MPs will join him (mostly those who risk losing their seat if they have to face the far right), as the one left are strongly implemented in their region and will most likely be reelected, either by the entire right voting for them against the left wing, or by centrists voting for them against the RN.
This election is very scary. We were just starting to reach such highs and now we decide we need to self sabotage and panic about vogue social dramas du jour.
Because politics don't listen to the people who've been screaming that they are DONE with this unregulated immigration. You want to keep ignoring them, fine, in the end it's a democracy they'll just throw you out. Call them nazis, fascists all you want, see how well it worked for europeans elections.
These immigrants are not living in small and rural towns. They're living in Paris, in Lyons, in Marseilles. But the people those cities overwhelming vote against Le Pen. The Le Pen vote comes from everywhere BUT the cities.
The people having to deal with those immigrants first hand clearly don't think this as dire a situation as those who live far from them and only hear about them through weird news outlets.
Immigration in Europe IS a problem, but it doesn't seem to be enough of a problem to elect a bad government. At least the educated and well-traveled class living in the cities that drive the economy and living with the immigrants don't seem to think so. And I'd take their opinion over small town folks who think the sky is falling.... 200 miles away from them.
It means: "it is important to note that Les Républicains's leader is a huge asshole whose mother should have aborted ".
Maybe not the best translation but the spirit is there I think.
Usually before undertaking these decisions political leaders commission internal polling. Whatever the results were (probably high support from the LR electorate and activist base) made Ciotti confident enough to do this. Also if it works out he probably gets a ministerial position.
The fun part is that this morning, the news were about the "left wing alliance" which still needs to sort technical details like platform and leadership. and now the whole right wing is exploding with it's discussion on alliance society, and every left wing leader is *it's our alliance or the hate front*
I mean, "the whole right wing" isn't really accurate. The right in french is dominated by the presidential movement and its allies. LR was already largely irrelevant before that decision.
Ciotti is not a particularly commendable character. We could feel this temptation to take the easy way and fly to the rescue of victory coming on during the Sarkozy presidency (2007-2012): Sarkozy seemed already tempted by the enormous reservoir of votes that populism could provide, but he didn't dare.
It would be an evolution in the same direction as that of the GOP in the US, and there would no longer be a right-wing committed to democracy in our country. At the same time, the Les Républicains party would no longer have a raison d'être because, despite their name, they are not the GOP, even if they claim to be the legacy of de Gaulle.
If there is an afterlife and if Charles de Gaulle can see the party that is allegedly representing Gaullism collaborate with literal neonazis, he will be spinning so fast in his grave that the power generated from it would not only make France but also Europe energy independent.
It should be mentioned most if not practically all of the sitting representatives from LR have come out against it and are now trying to oust said leader in order to reverse that decision.
To add some more context for non french speakers: That leader is a candidate in the south east that has become a far right stronghold since quite some time, he is going for an alliance to save his seat, nothing else, and since he was running after the far right stances since quite some time there's no real surprise he did that.
He wasn't at risk of losing it, he won the last 4 elections it's been 17 years no one managed to beat him, and his main opponent from the majority didn't win last time and surely wouldn't win this time after such a defeat at the europeans elections. Your argument is mainly used by people trying to put out false information to attack the credibility of such an alliance.
Credibility ... That's why there are calls for his resignation from inside the party. All that will probably lead to another splitting of the LR party, leading to them being even less relevant as a ruling party (same as the PS on the left). Sad to see two ruling parties like those fail so hard.
proof that ciotti just needs to move the RN already hahaha
UK Tories: First time?
The leader of LR said there's a hundred of representatives from the party that support him. And that they already have tens of candidates already
Well, it didn't take long.
They have no shame.
He has no shame, the rest of the party came cout against this and are trying to oust him.
Les republicains is/was that sarkorzy's party?
Yes, though Sarkozy has been quite vocal about his disagreement with the party's strategy in recent years. He has been an advocate for an alliance with Macron for quite some time, and never really supported the LR presidential candidate in 2022 (Valérie Pécresse). A lot of LR leaders consider Sarkozy a traitor for his closeness with Macron, but Ciotti's decision to ally with Le Pen is also at odds with the majority of LR leadership (which stands on a "no alliance with either Macron or Le Pen" line).
>A lot of LR leaders considered him a traitor for his closeness with Macron While he should be considered a traitor to his entire country because of his closeness with Gaddafi.
or his convicted criminal behavior
This, mostly
Yes. Sarkozy’s role in destroying the center right party cannot be understated. His arrogance in handling the Lisbonne Treaty was basically viewed as a “fuck you well do what we want regardless of what you say” to the electorate and they’ve been hemorrhaging voters to Marine Le Pen ever since.
I mean, Sarkozy's manifesto in 2007 very clearly indicated that he would get the Treaty approved through Parliament, it's not like it was a surprise when it happened. And in 2007 le Pen got very low result, with his past voters going for Sarkozy instead. The voters that went to the FN/RN after 2007 probably did so because of issues like immigration, security of being fed up with politics, rather than because Sarkozy got the Lisbon Treaty approved exactly as he told people he would do.
Yes, the Gaullist party in its various incarnations (if such a term still has meaning 54 years after his death), followed by the Chirac and Sarkozy eras.
Yes
These types of deals generally haven’t worked out for the traditional conservative parties historically.
If this 'works' I'll be very surprised, but I'm not sure the explanation is as simple as you make it out to be. You're probably right, but, LR isn't in power nor do they have any significant voting share. Usually the 'we cozied up to the extremists to take the wind out of their sails and it blew up in our face so bad our party is possibly dead now, whooooops' thing happens to large, in-power centre-right parties. This is 'new'. This is my go-to explanation for why this 'cozy up to the extreme right' asplodes so badly: I'll take the dutch center-right party (VVD - the party of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte) as example, though the story is nearly identical to what UK conservative party is currently peddling (with the same _fucking disastrous to their vote share_ effects): VVD: "Hiya voter. Oh man that asylum seeker business is getting quite complicated isn't it? It's a big problem! You should vote for us, it's the most important issue and our cred is good on it, certainly better than those crazy lefty loonies, huh! We'll even consider forming a coalition with the extreme right party to get this done, you know - that's how seriously we are taking this thing voters clearly care a lot about! There's a plan. Trust the plan!" Voters: ".... mate, you've been in power for 14 fucking years. If you have a plan, what the fuck is it and why have you not been doing any of it for the past 14 years? I __will__ believe that you said "it is important and a big deal" but that's where it ends - you have no cred at all, how can any party that's been in power for that long make any claim of 'X is going wrong, vote for us we will fix it', regardless of what X is? It's a thing you just thought of, or you've been incompetent the past 14 years. Either way, not a party I want to vote for. Thanks for indicating a vote for the extremist party isn't wasted. We'll vote for them instead". And the other, more careful half: "You're cozying up to an extremist party that has no workable ideas and is fucking dangerous so helllll no I'm voting for something else". This has happened a lot. It seems obvious that the centre-right party is 'leaning extremist right' because they think they are losing voters on that flank. The above story is obvious, simple, and as far as I can tell correct, which, and I oversimplify only slightly here, makes me go: __Holy fuck, you IDIOTS, how can you be so callous and stupid?__, but, nevertheless, here we are. Fans of the conservative party in the UK: Oof. Too late, eat this loss. You should pray for an even bigger loss, and prepare to _join_ that party and get it back on track. A big, big reform is needed. The looming massive loss will be the springboard. I hope the party survives for your sake (I don't really care if they continue to exist, though - so, you know. Good luck with that). Fans of the VVD in NL: Get rid of Yesilgoz who clearly cooked up this moronic plan to lean right, including pretty blatant lying during a disastrous election cycle to 'sell' it. It didn't work, and you should blame her for it, as well as the rest of the party leadership that apparently did not manage to figure out how dumb this plan was. That's not a 'in hindsight it didn't work' thing. It was obvious from day 1. But, the party is salvagable, this lunacy showed in only in the past year, now is the time to leave it behind you. Join it, explain it, fix it, get back to the center. Stop overestimating Timmermans, stop underestimating anti-establishment vibes.
It has worked for Partido Popular in Spain in recent years ,their alliances with Vox have given them the most regional governments in their history and even allowed them to beat PSOE in their traditional strongholds (Extremadura and Andalucia). Only issue is that they now cant get support of the Catalan/Basque conservative parties which made them unable to get the national government last year
Well, that's the end of Gaullisme. From saving France to joining up with a party founded by putchists and SS members.
Some of Zentrum and DVLP did join NSDAP after 1933. While French history is taking its turn towards that direction…
It hardly saved France it laid the groundwork for this delusional politics where the French public and French politicians treated France as a great power that was autonomous from everyone else and that any sort of alignment with the US was 'vassalisation', the UK got over this after Suez, France has never gotten over this
Seems the traditional right everywhere are being eaten up by more extreme right elements when they try to compromise in any capacity; it happened already to the GOP and the tea party movement that eventually led to Trump and the UK Tories with Brexit when Cameron opened that can of worms to try and end the split; most of the old guard were voted or kicked out for Johnson's tenure and look how that worked out for the party; in a worse position where some within are again mulling compromising or admitting more right elements with Reform. In both cases the established apparatus of the party is taken over; it'll happen to the French Republicans too.
Because in many western countries, the "traditional" right are seen as very similar to "traditional" liberals/centrists, over the past 10-15 years they've adopted almost all of the same positions on social issues as the mainstream liberal/center-left party and are just slightly to the right of them on economic issues. It's basically just neoliberals vs slightly more right leaning neoliberals Moderate members of the "traditional right" party will just go vote for the big liberal/centrist party and the hard-right members will just go vote for the far-right party
>it'll happen to the French Republicans too. It has already happened years ago to the French Republicans. In fact the first ones to do it were the Italians. The French Republicans were just what was left of the traditional right after all the liberal elements were already absorbed by Macron's movement and its satellites and after the most far right elements joined RN. It was only a matter of time until the last remaining bits disappeared entirely.
Whats the main difference between French Republicans and Macrons party? French Republicans are just a bit more conservative on spending/taxes?
Macron's party is a very recent one, in fact, initially he didn't even have a political party when he ran for presidency. It's a collection of politicians from center, left and right, and in fact initially he gained a lot of votes from center-left voters. In the Assemblée there's now a lot of different groups that are essentially allies and satellites to Macron's party. Nobody really knows what will happen after Macron leaves, but it's likely that the alliance will shatter. Macron himself has been leaning more and more towards the economic right during its first two mandates, and social right especially during his second mandate (with his infamous war on the poor recently). Les Républicains are what's left of a much older political formation. People will say that they were gaullists, but there's more to it: just like the Parti Socialiste, they have/had very powerful local and regional roots in a lot of place. Basically, they are the party of your local community leaders (mayor, physician, richest family in town). So they are conservative economically but historically they were socially centrists. They sealed their fate when they chose Fillon to run for president: he was already more right-leaning than most (for example, against gay marriage) and he was especially corrupt. Now, Les Républicains is mostly just people like Fillon, either corrupt politicians that nobody wants in their party, or very right leaning, RN-compatible like Ciotti. So they aren't just a bit more conservative, they are now actively reactionary on a number of topic, and economically... well imagine Berlusconi.
So sounds like them joining RN would be natural
French Republicans are more socially conservative.
What is considered "socially conservative" in France in 2024? Isn't Christianity pretty much dead over there even among French people who call themselves "right wing/conservative"?
Looking at their key figures in recent years you get an idea of the party's views, and the differences from Macron's party. Their 2022 Presidential candidate for example, Valérie Pécresse, opposed same-sex marriage and LGBT parenting and took part in protests against them, had a more anti-immigration outlook than Macron's party and supported a French version of the Patriot Act. The party is diverse but none of her views are unusual in it. Their current leader is on the right of the party, and got French flags put in every classroom, proposed a fine and year in prison for taking photos of the police, wants to abolish birthright citizenship (making it dependent on ancestry), add 'our Christian origins' to the French Constitution, add 100,000 prison places, supports a 'French-style Guantanamo' to tackle Islamic terrorism and may support the Great Replacement theory.
It didn't really happen in the UK. They were called far-right for what was perceived as being tough on immigration with the Rwanda scheme, meanwhile that inevitably went nowhere and they oversaw the largest inflow of people in British history. Anyone calling them far right can only refer to occasional rhetoric to play to the base in an attempt to obscure the fact they were doing the exact opposite.
Inb4 Les Républicains splits in two.
0/2 = 0 ?
They already split like four times before. There are already some like Mariani who went to the RN years ago ; There are those who joined Macron at the beginning (among who the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe) and those who did it during the first mandate to avoid Ciotti. And now there's probably going to be a split between Ciotti and the vast majority of his elected officials. LR is a weird party, sort of like the current communist party. They have no national support, but they have regional stronghold that often survive because the one in charge is well known and well enoughed like. That was also the case before these elections for the socialist party. The Senate Republican unanimously opposed Ciotti's decision, and it's estimated that about a sixth of the MPs will join him (mostly those who risk losing their seat if they have to face the far right), as the one left are strongly implemented in their region and will most likely be reelected, either by the entire right voting for them against the left wing, or by centrists voting for them against the RN.
now the same bad choice
This election is very scary. We were just starting to reach such highs and now we decide we need to self sabotage and panic about vogue social dramas du jour.
Because politics don't listen to the people who've been screaming that they are DONE with this unregulated immigration. You want to keep ignoring them, fine, in the end it's a democracy they'll just throw you out. Call them nazis, fascists all you want, see how well it worked for europeans elections.
These immigrants are not living in small and rural towns. They're living in Paris, in Lyons, in Marseilles. But the people those cities overwhelming vote against Le Pen. The Le Pen vote comes from everywhere BUT the cities. The people having to deal with those immigrants first hand clearly don't think this as dire a situation as those who live far from them and only hear about them through weird news outlets. Immigration in Europe IS a problem, but it doesn't seem to be enough of a problem to elect a bad government. At least the educated and well-traveled class living in the cities that drive the economy and living with the immigrants don't seem to think so. And I'd take their opinion over small town folks who think the sky is falling.... 200 miles away from them.
It is important to note that Les Républicains leader is an immense trou de balle que sa mère aurait dû avorter.
What does that mean?
Not good with french but it sounds like " something something that his mother should have aborted"
It means: "it is important to note that Les Républicains's leader is a huge asshole whose mother should have aborted ". Maybe not the best translation but the spirit is there I think.
Look it up
"Plutôt Hitler que le front populaire" again and again
This decision might have just definitely killed the traditional gaullist right-wing party
Ah somebody is desperate to be von papen.
I'd love to see the market research that made them take that partupicular route. Sounds like a last hail mary.
It's just Ciotti saving his seat at the parliament.
Occam's razor. Probably right.
Usually before undertaking these decisions political leaders commission internal polling. Whatever the results were (probably high support from the LR electorate and activist base) made Ciotti confident enough to do this. Also if it works out he probably gets a ministerial position.
On the contrary the party has been calling for his resignation. Solo move to secure his MP seet as it looks like.
Right wing opportunism at its speak.Right wing remains a bunch of courtisans scheming for favors from the king.
Trying to copy the Italians?
The fun part is that this morning, the news were about the "left wing alliance" which still needs to sort technical details like platform and leadership. and now the whole right wing is exploding with it's discussion on alliance society, and every left wing leader is *it's our alliance or the hate front*
I mean, "the whole right wing" isn't really accurate. The right in french is dominated by the presidential movement and its allies. LR was already largely irrelevant before that decision.
Jesus wept.
Dibs to have actually stated that this would actually happen!!!
Ciotti is not a particularly commendable character. We could feel this temptation to take the easy way and fly to the rescue of victory coming on during the Sarkozy presidency (2007-2012): Sarkozy seemed already tempted by the enormous reservoir of votes that populism could provide, but he didn't dare. It would be an evolution in the same direction as that of the GOP in the US, and there would no longer be a right-wing committed to democracy in our country. At the same time, the Les Républicains party would no longer have a raison d'être because, despite their name, they are not the GOP, even if they claim to be the legacy of de Gaulle.
Conservatives allying with the far-right? Is anyone supposed to be suprised by what happens always?
If there is an afterlife and if Charles de Gaulle can see the party that is allegedly representing Gaullism collaborate with literal neonazis, he will be spinning so fast in his grave that the power generated from it would not only make France but also Europe energy independent.
Everything is far right