The rallying of RN MEP Gilbert Collard to Eric Zemmour marks a new stage in the battle between the far right in the race for the Elysée
The fratricidal war is hardening on the far right: Eric Zemmour, in friendly territory in Cannes on Saturday, continues with Gilbert Collard his poaching from the RN in an attempt to weaken his presidential rival Marine Le Pen, who is trying to minimize.
The RN MEP and 73-year-old lawyer is expected at 6:30 p.m. at the Cannes meeting, where Eric Zemmour hopes for 4,000 people to conclude his trip to the Alpes-Maritimes.
In a mid-day coffee, the candidate has already boasted of “bringing together” the “right-wing people who have been artificially divided for 40 years”.
“We toast to the gathering of right-wing people who have been artificially divided for 40 years. We are going to collect it, and precisely I am here for that, ”launched the ex-editorialist.
Eric Zemmour wandered for two hours without incident in the city of Cannes, surrounded by a crowd of supporters, on land which is a priori favorable to him.
Gilbert Collard had suggested his team change on Facebook on Friday. “Tomorrow I’m going to swim in the river (…) Rubicon”, he said on the social network. Other names are also circulating in the RN 78 days before the first round of the presidential election.
MEP Jérôme Rivière RN and former member of Generation Identity Damien Rieu already accompanied Eric Zemmour on Friday in Menton.
Invocation of the “union of the rights”
These defectors have in common, on a line close to Marion Maréchal, to invoke “the union of the rights”, the Catholic identity of France, and to judge that Marine Le Pen has “softened up” in her anti- -immigration. Jérôme Rivière thus mocked Saturday “the small renunciations of Le Pen. She is so obsessed with the second round that she becomes the ultimate variant of the system. »
“The egos overheat and the betrayals bathe in all the rubicons of bitterness and childish jealousies”, lambasted on Twitter Louis Aliot, the RN mayor of Perpignan, who remained faithful to the Le Pen camp. The candidate will have the opportunity to react on Sunday, during her appearance on the Sunday in politics program on France 3.
Le Pen minimizes
Before the rallying of Gilbert Collard, relatively marginalized in the party, Marine Le Pen had minimized the phenomenon.
“In electoral campaigns, there are always some vicissitudes which are also the subject of an interest inversely proportional to the effect it has on voters,” she smiled at Fréjus on Thursday.
“The salami technique of announcing a rally every day, I know it by heart. The chiraquiens knew it with Balladur and we ourselves lived it with Mégret. I think that with Balladur and Mégret it lasted much longer than it will last with Eric Zemmour, ”she quipped again.
Bruno Mégret, long number 2 of the National Front, had split with a whole part of the management in 1998.
At this stage, the RN candidate remains above Eric Zemmour in the opinion polls, which place her neck and neck with the right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse, often around 17 or 18% in the first round, ahead of Eric Zemmour (around 13%), but far behind Emmanuel Macron (24% to 25%).
Zemmour struggles with LR
Its competitor Reconquest! also exhibits the rallies to try to bounce back after a delicate 8-day streak. His remarks on the “obsession with inclusion” of children with disabilities in school provoked an uproar.
Eric Zemmmour was also sentenced on Monday to a fine of 10,000 euros for incitement to hatred, for comments made in 2020 on Cnews about unaccompanied migrant minors. He appealed.
But the rallying of Le Pen and Zemmour “it sets up a trend” and Marine Le Pen “seems out of breath”, thinks a source close to the two campaigns.
Eric Zemmour, on the other hand, seems to struggle more to convince executives at Les Républicains (LR), apart from the former number 2 Guillaume Peltier.
” Be patient! February and March, that counts more than January ”, replied this one bravado Friday evening, before a dinner in Antibes between Eric Zemmour and lawyers committed to his cause.
Some wonder especially about the “recomposition” post 2022 in the event of failure of the two far-right rivals in the presidential election. With in ambush, Marion Maréchal, who had accompanied Eric Zemmour to Budapest, but did not express a preference between his aunt Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.