French politics: cross-declarations and launch of the left-wing primary

Guest of the franceinfo morning show this Wednesday, Maud Bregeon, government spokesperson and Minister of Energy, said she was “very worried” about the prospect of an RN-LFI second round in the next presidential election. “I see the probability of a second round between the National Rally and La France Insoumise rising in the country, with all that this implies in terms of dramatic consequences in the short, medium and long term for the country,” she confides.

For Maud Bregeon, the “only antidote” to this duel is the “coming together of the right and the center” behind Édouard Philippe, the “best placed to be in the second round and have a majority”. Then, referring to the other candidates: “Never Gabriel Attal, never Bruno Retailleau will take the risk of leaving the country and future generations a France governed by Mr Mélenchon or Madame Le Pen.”

Louis Aliot, RN mayor of Perpignan and vice-president of the party, does not “see” Emmanuel Macron “remaining neutral” during the presidential campaign. The President of the Republic said he wanted to be the “guarantor” of this campaign. “He wants to give himself a role that the Constitution does not assign to him,” denounced Louis Aliot this Wednesday morning on France 2.

“It is the Constitutional Council which is the guarantor of the presidential election. The president is an arbiter who must not get involved in these matters. We will see what his role will be... He remains head of state until the end of the presidential election,” he adds. “I doubt that his words will remain neutral. He is politically engaged, and in particular against us (the RN).”

So far so good for them. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Hollande can rub their hands: the primary of the socialist left is happening as they had planned. That is to say in the best of their respective interests. The candidate of La France insoumise can gradually allow his “useful vote” profile to emerge on the left; the former President of the Republic can allow his status as a social-democratic recourse to be built.

Will the first televised debate, on LCI, reverse the course of things? This primary, desired by Olivier Faure's socialist party and accepted by Place publique, Raphaël Glucksmann's party, begins under the worst auspices. A candidate, Philippe Brun, hastily dismissed on the basis of serious accusations but even before the person concerned was informed or consulted, and exchanges of barbs between Ségolène Royal, who attacked, and Glucksmann, who defended himself, who are not at the level of aspirants to the supreme office.

Should we tax the margins of oil refiners to lower fuel prices, as La France insoumise proposes? “Yes, if there are excessive margins or rents,” admitted Jean-Philippe Tanguy at the microphone of CNEWS/Europe 1, explaining that this would amount to an “abuse of dominant position”. But for the rest, “we must stop blabbering like the left does”, denounces the RN deputy for the Somme: given that “most of the refineries are outside French borders” and that the country imports “half of the diesel we consume”, taxing excessively risks creating “tensions on the market”. And “in the end there will be less fuel and it will cost more,” he assures.

Jean-Philippe Tanguy thus denounces “the declarations, each more astonishing than the last” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who “fidgets in his seat shouting “tax! tax! tax!””. “Insulting the markets without proposing a concrete solution increases prices, and it is the French who pay, not Mr. Mélenchon.”

Instead, the National Rally is proposing a reduction in VAT from 20 to 5.5% as part of a set of measures which would cost “between 15 and 16 billion euros”, according to the Somme MP. This cost would be offset, according to the party, by several savings measures including a reduction in social benefits for foreigners. Jean-Philippe Tanguy also suggests drawing on strategic oil reserves, a measure which “would cost nothing”.

He also denounces the government's powerlessness in the face of the crisis. While “the economy is really on the verge of collapse”, Emmanuel Macron, according to him, takes a “form of pleasure in not hearing the French”. “The French state is not held by the Macronists, who do anything,” he says.

Targeted aid is “necessary and just”, but faced with the “structural crisis”, “structural measures” are needed: guest of the TF1 morning show this Wednesday morning, Bruno Le Maire called on the government to go beyond the help unveiled on Tuesday for French people in need. The former Minister of the Economy proposes to eliminate energy saving certificates (EEC), a “gas plant which does not give the necessary results”, he explains, citing the work of the Court of Auditors.

The EEC system is based on an obligation set by the State on energy suppliers who must encourage consumers to reduce their consumption. To fulfill this obligation, they offer financial aid to individuals wishing to carry out energy saving work in their homes. Bruno Le Maire therefore affirms that removing EECs would reduce costs for fuel sellers, and therefore prices.

Bruno Le Maire also invites the State to accelerate the energy transition: “get rid of oil”, “finance the electrification of the country”, and “accelerate the deployment of nuclear reactors”. “We are the country in Europe that produces the cheapest carbon-free energy thanks to its nuclear electricity,” he adds.

Bruno Le Maire also spoke on the 2027 budget, explaining that there is an “urgent need to regain control of our public finances” to “give us the freedom tomorrow to make strategic investments”. This involves “immediate” measures: deindexation of retirement pensions by 1 point, deindexation of social benefits, freezing of the recruitment of civil servants, freezing of the advancement of civil servants, freezing of aid to local authorities which are not in financial difficulty. This “emergency brake” must be accompanied, according to the former tenant of Bercy, by maintaining “taxation of very large companies”. And behind, “we will carry out a pension reform: 65 years, capitalization, support for difficult professions”.

Not a single candle burns on the horizon. Not even a cake, let alone party favors. From time to time we can just hear a foghorn at the back of the room. A few “Happy Birthday!” erupt timidly, but remain a dead letter. This is because we are not at the birthday party of Ségolène Royal, born on September 22, 1953, 73 years ago to the day, but at the first public meeting of her campaign in the socialist primary in October.

In a large gymnasium in Alfortville, in Val-de-Marne, some 200 to 300 people came to listen to the former socialist minister, who intends to win the presidential election twenty years after her failure in the second round against Nicolas Sarkozy. It is at this level, totally unexpected at this stage, that the person concerned places her ambitions. “We believe that Ségolène Royal can become the first woman president of the Republic,” defended her campaign director, Luc Carvounas, also mayor of the host city, on stage.

The boss of the Ecologists and presidential candidate Marine Tondelier gave birth on September 18 to her second child, a little boy named Léon, she announced to AFP on Wednesday. The first contender for the Élysée to have been pregnant, she specified that the birth had gone “very well”, and that she would for a certain time “try to invent how to reconcile a presidential campaign and a newborn, whose health and well-being come first”.

When she announced her pregnancy at the end of March, she recounted her difficulties after a miscarriage and an unsuccessful PMA and IVF course. It was finally after putting her plans for a child on hold that she became pregnant.

Pulling the rug out from under Édouard Philippe. This was the objective that the LR presidential candidate, Bruno Retailleau, set for himself Tuesday evening on LCI, to try to catch up in the polls against his competitor Horizons, who is slow to come out of the woods on his pension reform. A clarification all the more delayed because, if the mayor of Le Havre wanted to remove the plaster from the 67 years that his adversaries want to stick to his skin, the program “The Hour of Truth” where he was to bring it next Thursday was postponed to October 8 due to a presidential interview.

Enough to constitute a window of opportunity for the boss of the Republicans, who saw it as a boon to relaunch himself. Because since the suspension of the Borne reform in the 2026 budget, the fate of which was referred to the presidential election, the question of pensions promises to liven up the campaign. With the ambition of “saving the pension system for retirees”, not only so that they are not “impoverished today and tomorrow”, but also for the “young generations”, the Vendée senator wants to combine “freedom” and “responsibility”. And this, around two ages.

After the invectives through the media and the Philippe Brun affair, and before the vote of the activists, let's get to the bottom of it: the primary of the social-democratic space really begins on Wednesday with the first televised debate bringing together the five candidates.

At 8:40 p.m. on LCI, “Olivier Faure, Jérôme Guedj, Emmanuel Maurel, Raphaël Glucksmann and Ségolène Royal, candidates for the Left Primary will participate in a program in the “Face aux Français” format,” indicated the PS in a press release. “On the stage, around ten French people will be present to question the candidates on international issues and national challenges relating to ecological transition, public debt or purchasing power” continues the party.

The start of the primary was marked by the surprise sidelining of the socialist deputy Philippe Brun, who had obtained his sponsorship, for accusations of violence against a former collaborator. The elected official from Eure, also suspended as a precautionary measure, requested to be reinstated in the primary and took legal action to this effect. He filed a summary judgment against the PS, the decision of which should be rendered in the morning.