With the appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister on Thursday, September 5, the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party is experiencing a reversal of fortune, echoing Jesus' words from the Gospel of Saint Matthew: "So the last shall be first, and the first last."

Despite finishing fifth in the snap legislative elections on July 7, winning 47 seats in the Assemblée Nationale, the conservatives won the race to the prime minister's office. The left decried it as democratic robbery, while the LR party welcomed this unexpected return to power. "It's good news for France and for the right," said LR lawmakerAntoine Vermorel-Marques. "For us, it's an opportunity to show that we can once again occupy a political space, 12 years after leaving Matignon [the residence of the prime minister]."

In 2012, the 31-year-old was just old enough to vote and had not yet met his future political mentor: Barnier. On Thursday, Vermorel-Marques was one of the first to congratulate him in person. It was common on the right to either call and praise the new prime minister or post an enthusiastic message on X. "He is a man of great quality, who has everything it takes to succeed in the difficult mission entrusted to him," wrote Laurent Wauquiez, head of the LR group in the Assemblée Nationale.

Such praise would have seemed more strained if directed to Xavier Bertrand (LR), president of the northern Hauts-de-France region and favorite for the job just the day before, given the mutual dislike between him and Wauquiez. None of this applies to Barnier, a respected 73-year-old who has had no adversaries on the right for many years, regardless of the party's changing names and acronyms (UDR, RPR, UMP and LR). Wauquiez is all the more comfortable with Barnier as prime minister after reluctantly accepting Bertrand's potential appointment during a phone call with Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday.

Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the LR senators, was also initially reluctant to accept the potential appointment of Bertrand but ended up approving the option. On Tuesday evening, Retailleau even met with Bertrand to examine the "legislative pact" devised by the parliamentary right in the wake of the legislative elections. This set of proposals was meant to show a constructive approach to rejecting any formal alliance between the right and the president's camp.

At the time, Olivier Marleix, then the president of the LR group in the Assemblée known to be a vocal critic of Macron, surprised everyone by calling on the president to "appoint a prime minister from Les Républicains." Paris Senator Marie-Claire Carrère-Gée, one of the few other LR members share this view, declared on X: "Only the LR can now lay claim to Matignon and form the pivot of a broader majority." Carrère-Gée was the campaign manager for Barnier during the 2021 right-wing primary for the 2022 presidential election.

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