France: Who after Macron?

Edouard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre and president of the right-wing Horizons party, and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at the port of Le Havre, July 25, 2023

PARIS France

There had been a gentlemen's agreement in the upper ranks of government: Hostilities for Emmanuel Macron's succession in 2027 were not to start before the 2024 Olympic Games, halfway through the president's second term.

So much for that. Under Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin's impetus, the dance has already begun.

In mid-August, when he told Le Figaro that he was now looking ahead to 2027, the spurned contender for prime minister irritated many members of the governing coalition, who spoke out against this lèse-majesté.

In the summer of 2022, he had told Le Monde that it was far too early to be thinking about the next presidential election. "We must all be intelligent enough to understand that the battle is not now, it's 2025," he also said during a trip to the overseas territory of Mayotte. He had added, "The first to cross the line will be handicapped for what follows."

Yet, like his mentor Nicolas Sarkozy, Darmanin has started to undertake sweeping maneuvers, just one year after Macron's re-election.

Gérald Darmanin

Twenty years ago, immediately after Jacques Chirac's fragile re-election against Jean-Marie Le Pen, Sarkozy, then the interior minister (history repeats itself!), had also made his ambitions known, declaring as early as 2003 that he was thinking about 2007. The rest is history.

But with the path to succeed Macron congested by so many contenders, each has to look for a brand with which to distinguish themself, a political space to carve out. Darmanin is targeting the "popular classes," which he calls "the key" to the forthcoming election.

"We mustn't leave the popular-class electorate alone with the RN [Rassemblement national], far right," he said, criticizing the fact that no one in the majority is addressing this group of voters.

The minister who never fails to mention his humble origins believes that this positioning will enable him to differentiate himself from his rivals, former prime minister Edouard Philippe and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who are "fighting over the liberal and progressive" identity, he said. "Me, I don't have any doubles," he added.