“I will be a candidate for the presidency of the Republicans” because in the absence of Laurent Wauquiez “many asked me to introduce myself”, affirms the senator from Vendée whose candidacy seemed imminent for a few days.
The boss of LR senators Bruno Retailleau unsurprisingly announced his candidacy for the head of the Republicans on Friday, emphasizing in Le Figaro his “ability to federate” on a “popular and patriotic” line. “I will be a candidate for the presidency of the Republicans” because in the absence of Laurent Wauquiez “many asked me to introduce myself”, affirms the senator from Vendée whose candidacy seemed imminent for a few days. “With the activists, I want to build this great right-wing, popular and patriotic party, which France lacks today,” he adds.
Claiming to have “always sought to gather”, he specifies that he is not “candidate against anyone”, in particular not Éric Ciotti and Aurélien Pradié who have “all legitimacy to present themselves”. All three will participate in the LR youth campus this weekend in Angers. But “this election must not turn into a face-to-face between two camps that would play one-upmanship” because “in our state of weakness, a frontal shock could break us”, he warns.
To read, Bruno Retailleau on LR: “We are a right that speaks clearly and thinks straight”
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The ability of a leader is not only measured by his authority, but also by his ability to federate
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“The capacity of a leader is not measured only by his authority, but also by his ability to federate”, adds Bruno Retailleau who has garnered support in recent days: Gérard Larcher, François-Xavier Bellamy and Othman Nasrou (who have both renounced to run), and even Senator Stéphane Le Rudulier, yet former spokesperson for Eric Ciotti during the primary.
On his lines of thought, he evokes a “complete change” of the education system and pleads for “more security, less taxes and immigration” with on this last point a referendum “so that the French people reclaim this question. existential”. Bruno Retailleau suggests that he will keep the head of the group in the Senate if he is elected president of LR on December 3, a combination “not only compatible but desirable” while “Parliament returns to the center of public debate”: it is, according to him, “a pledge of coherence and clarity”.
If he deems it “common sense” not to do “systematic obstruction”, he assures him: “we will never be macronists”. And “I will always reach out to the voters of Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour because I will never resign myself to the fact that sincerely right-wing French people have left us”, he adds. His election would not automatically mean a presidential candidacy, assures Bruno Retailleau: “I am a candidate to rebuild my party, not to preside over the country”.