Edouard Philippe, French Prime Minister until 3 July 2020, founded a party, with the name of “Horizons” (Horizons). The article by Enrico Martial
Edouard Philippe, French Prime Minister until 3 July 2020, founded a party, with the name of “Horizons” (Horizons) and presented it in front of an audience of 3,000 people in Le Havre, the city of which he is mayor, Saturday 9 October 2021. It is a force in support of Emmanuel Macron’s candidacy for the 2022 presidential elections, but not only.
Meanwhile, the party-form of Horizons differentiates the initiative from the others that have been formed, essentially by parliamentary groups that vote in the majority, such as “Agir” always in the right wing of the Republique en Marche (LREM). Horizons takes a longer perspective: he could look to the post-Macron and presidential elections of 2027, both as a political force and perhaps to nominate Philippe himself.
Secondly, Horizons constitutes a political entity capable of attracting members of Les Republicains. The heirs of the Gaullist party are rather torn and in an uncertain position, focused on the issues of security and identity. They are attracted by the polemicist and possible candidate Eric Zemmour, who is more to the right of Marine Le Pen, and are weakened by the judicial proceedings of Nicolas Sakozy, who is sentenced to a second sentence albeit in the first degree. They have leadership problems, including Xavier Bertrand (president of the Haut-de-France region), Valerie Pecresse (president of the ‘Ile-de-France region), Michel Barnier (former Brexit negotiator for the EU). The congress on December 4th may not be the solution, and Pecresse herself or at least some exponents of that area could join Philippe’s party,
Thirdly, also for the timing of presentation, Horizons completes on the right the forces supporting Macron’s candidacy in 2022, alongside centrist Francois Bayrou with his MoDem, which met in Guidel, Brittany, on September 26. last) and of La Republique en Marche, whose meetings in Avignon, on 1 October, were interlocutory. Compared to some optimism that would take Emmanuel Macron’s re-election for granted, Edouard Philippe warned instead of the need to broaden the electoral base, beyond the current one, and to work in addition in the medium term, with a strong political project, in which in fact placed.
For this reason, the presentation of Edouard Philippe in Le Havre is an attempt at leadership, alongside President Macron, but also with its own autonomy of perspective. In the short term, it expresses itself in the meantime towards Les Republicains, and their current screwing up on the contents and conflicts between people, proposing a broader political scenario.
His two-hour presentation, in convention format, strolling the stage, with features of humor, distinguished four themes, or “vertigo”, a term used to accentuate the meaning of political challenges. The first is demographic and global (African expansion and European aging), the second environmental and climatic (the threat is gigantic, nuclear is not the solution but remains fundamental in the short term), the third geopolitical (China has produced in two years as concrete as the United States throughout the 1900s, multilateralism is in crisis), the fourth technological-digital, with artificial intelligence and its impacts on work, on health and people, or on safety.
Already illustrated by Philippe at the Jean-Pierre Raffarin seminar on August 27, the four themes were accompanied by reasoning on things to do, touching on themes that are also spoken about in Italy. He stressed that the political debate in France is not up to the challenges, turned on opinions rather than articulated on facts. He said that we need order in public accounts, as in the streets, referring to debt containment and pension reform, in the logic of solidarity between generations. For security he defended the policies activated on terrorism (during his government), he spoke of petty crime and justice, to be strengthened even in the offices. And then added elements on agriculture, exports, the administrative organization of the state, on local authorities and decentralization: and around 600 mayors were present at the event. He declined ideas on social justice and economic freedom, with criticisms of degrowth and “easy public money”, explaining that public deficit spending must have effects on growth, indirectly echoing the words about “good debt” are heard by the President Mario Draghi.
