Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has, for years, been advocating for the right to ally itself with Emmanuel Macron's supporters, in the hope of putting a party that last governed under his presidency back on the road to power and credibility. Rather than stagnate on the sidelines, it might as well assert itself from within. "We protect ourselves behind a leader and then, when the time comes, we break away and strike," the former president would repeatedly say, sometimes accompanying his remarks by miming the gesture of raising a dagger and stabbing. He himself, he would recall, resorted to this stratagem when he was a minister under President Jacques Chirac, before being elected on the platform of a "break" with the past, in 2007.
The bigwigs of the right have long ignored this tactical advice. Such was their resentment of Macron, who had "stolen" their expected victory in 2017, that an alliance with the apostle of the "new world" was unthinkable. They were, moreover, embittered by the meticulous care with which this young president had sought to weaken (and humiliate) them, by poaching from their ranks: From the recruitment of his first prime minister, Edouard Philippe, and other figures from the Les Républicains (LR) party (Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin...) in 2017 to the spectacular poaching of Culture Minister Rachida Dati, in January 2024. During Macron's first term in office, the then president of LR, Christian Jacob, was quick to get angry when he recalled that Philippe had "hidden under a blanket, in the back of a car," to discreetly reach the headquarters of Macron's party between the two rounds of the 2017 presidential election. A "traitor," Jacob scorned.
The bitterness only grew. With each election, which saw more and more right-wing voters drift toward Macron's camp, the president gleefully carried out operations to destabilize LR and pluck from the right. In the 2022 presidential election, LR candidate Valérie Pécresse was the target of a "demonetization operation" conducted by the Elysée, designed to reduce her lane (Macron parrotted the bulk of her policy platform) and siphon off her electorate (she ended up obtaining 4% of the vote). "France is on the right. If I want to win, I have to siphon off the right," the president said at the time, reported the journalists Olivier Beaumont and Nathalie Schuck in Chérie, j'ai rétréci la droite! Enquête ("Honey, I shrunk the right! An investigation").
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