The former lawyer, elected to the Strasbourg Parliament in 2019 under the National Rally label, must formalize his arrival in the presidential team of the other far-right candidate.
One more. And not least. Eric Zemmour officially garners this Saturday a third support in a week from the National Rally of Marine Le Pen: Gilbert Collard, 73, former lawyer and ex-deputy Font national du Gard between 2012 and 2017, European parliamentarian in Strasbourg since 2019.
“I join him for the ideas, for the debate, for the taste of freedom and I remain a free man”, said Collard on Saturday morning on France Bleu Gard Lozère, ensuring that he had “nothing against the National Rally or against Marine Le Pen, no recrimination, no vindictiveness”.
The ex-lawyer, who had joined Marine Le Pen during the opening of the old National Front in “Navy Blue Rally”, must accompany the other far-right candidate, this Saturday evening, in a meeting in Cannes (Alps -Maritimes).
“It is first and foremost a campaign of friendship and camaraderie”, had commented Zemmour a little earlier in front of the television cameras, before strolling between the stands of the Cannes market. “It is a friend. We have been exchanging ideas, books for a very long time”, he added.
After the rallying of Guillaume Peltier from LR and the leader of RN MEPs, Jérôme Rivière and identity figure Damien Rieu, Gilbert Collard is a new take for the far-right polemicist, whose campaign has been skating since the start of the school year with a new court conviction and another trial this week. On the other hand, Thierry Mariani, the other MEP whose name has been circulating in recent hours as a potential defector, denies Release his intention to change his coat: “I got into the habit of staying at least forty-two years in training before going nomadism. See you in thirty-nine years”, jokes the former UMP, ex-Minister of Transport of Nicolas Sarkozy who is betting on his side on a Zemmour at less than 10% on April 10: “He’s doing a Bellamy-style campaign [le candidat de la liste LR aux européennes de 2019 qui avait réuni seulement 8,48% des suffrages exprimés, ndlr]. With huge press coverage. We talk about a “phenomenon”, but in the end it may end the same way. He believes in his intellectual collective, but that’s not bringing people together.”
Zemmour to Le Pen: “Sourness is a feeling”
At the National Rally, the priority is thus to minimize these rallies. “I have an old experience of presidential campaigns. That people feel closer to one candidate than another is not to be criticized. […] But in politics too, one can act with righteousness. The salami technique consisting of announcing a rally every day, I know it by heart., reacted Marine Le Pen. Saturday morning, Zemmour replied: “Sourness is a feeling, the calculation is reasoned. […] Some make calculations and choose their party before their country. There, it is the choice of convictions and of France. Collard and Zemmour “both voted Mitterrand”, do we laugh in the entourage of the RN candidate: “Funny union of the rights!”
This is not Collard’s first attempt to cross the “Rubikon”, as he had fun writing on his Facebook page on Friday. “He is in permanent protest and, already, in the European elections, he had blackmailed him by saying that if we did not put him on the list, he would go to Dupont-Aignan, said the mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot, in an interview with France Info. So his convictions are of variable geometry. But we must go to the end of this logic! He must resign from his mandate as an MEP which he received from the voters of the RN. Beyond the simple question of“friendships” between him and Zemmour, this departure from Collard could also be motivated by basely electoral reasons. Passed from the Palais Bourbon to the Strasbourg Parliament in 2019, Collard was cold with his deputy in the Assembly, Nicolas Meizonnet, who was chosen by the RN to compete in June in this constituency of Gard for the legislative elections. What Collard, according to a source inside the far-right party, would not have supported: “We never knew if it was Collard who wanted to run again to further extend his life as a deputy, or place his friend Christophe Lefèvre.” This municipal councilor of Saint-Gilles, a city where Collard led the opposition to the right-wing mayor until 2020, already went to Zemmour a week ago.
“The only division candidate is Zemmour. If it weren’t for Zemmour’s candidacy and a large rally, we would be ahead of Emmanuel Macron in the opinion polls, Aliot added. Today, the one who could save the Pécresse candidacy is Eric Zemmour. If at the end of the exercise they are the only ones responsible for the division of the national camp and they prevent us from being in the second round, they will carry forever in history. »
Moreover, within the RN apparatus, we insist on the fact that, unlike Jérôme Rivière, very active in Strasbourg and Brussels, “Collard has not appeared in Parliament for at least six months, said an RN executive. Not sure that his arrival at Zemmour will be very good in terms of image. In any case, it occupied the news channels continuously this Saturday op.