“This is the eighth time that defeat has struck the name of Le Pen. » Listening to the sentence issued on April 24, the evening of the second round, by the far-right candidate Eric Zemmour, a man is literally boiling. At the Pavillon d’Armenonville, a hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris, where Marine Le Pen is holding her election evening, MEP Philippe Olivier, brother-in-law and special adviser to the candidate of the National Rally (RN), feels targeted by the president of Reconquest!.
Since 2012, he has been the main architect of Marine Le Pen’s demonization strategy. It was he who was responsible, in particular, for writing the speeches of the one who has just lost the presidential election to Emmanuel Macron. The husband of Marie-Caroline, the eldest of the Le Pen daughters, will not take off the evening: “This guy who has been in politics for six months appeared in the bourgeois press and comes to give lessons when he weighs 7%! »
“We must not run after the identity excesses of Zemmour but continue to talk about purchasing power in France, which does not make ends meet. »Philip Olivier
The pike of the ex-polemicist goes all the more badly as Philippe Olivier, who militates with the National Front since 1979, affirms to have largely contributed to “modernize and professionalize” the party, which became RN in 2018. In recent months, while Marie-Caroline Le Pen, responsible for organizing her sister’s travels, ruled the agenda, this pillar of the management of the far-right formation hammered home her goal with executives to contain their impatience with the breakthrough of Reconquête!.
“Radicality is capped at 15%, he explained. In times of crisis, the French will turn to a reassuring figure. We must not run after the identity excesses of Zemmour but continue to talk about purchasing power in France, which does not make ends meet. » Candidate for re-election in Pas-de-Calais and pilot of the legislative campaign, Marine Le Pen will keep this course. No one knows if she will be a presidential candidate in 2027 or even if she wants to remain at the head of the RN. But Philippe Olivier is betting on the future: he also writes the speeches of Jordan Bardella, first vice-president and rising figure of the party, who for two years has been the boyfriend of his daughter, Nolwenn.
A more radical thought
The Olivier couple has not always been so in court at the RN. In 1998, they had betrayed Jean-Marie Le Pen by rallying the National Republican Movement (MNR) of Bruno Mégret, falling out with the patriarch. They took years to come back. In the shadows first: Philippe Olivier unofficially advised Marine Le Pen on the eve of the 2007 legislative elections, before appearing again in the party’s organization chart in 2018. If he always thought that his sister-in-law had to appear under a “sanitized label”, many people suspect Marine Le Pen’s right-hand man of supporting more radical thinking than the party line.
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