Latest news with #LaurentWauquiez
Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
I've met the best candidate for Tory leader. Unfortunately, he is French
The best candidate the Tories could ever find to lead them out of their current slough of despond is a Frenchman you've never heard of. Unfortunately for them, he's just won himself the job here in France. Bruno Retailleau, 64, the current Home Secretary in the wobbly Bayrou Cabinet, triumphed on Sunday with 75 per cent of the vote for leadership of Les Républicains, crushing his flashier rival Laurent Wauquiez, a former Sarkozy minister and top civil service mandarin, in what had been billed as a neck-to-neck race. In an increasingly polarised (and messy) political landscape, Retailleau, the son of a grain dealer and Mayor of their small Vendée town, is the quiet man. He was an MP for two years, but a Senator for twenty: the French Upper House (which enjoys more powers than its British counterpart the House of Lords) is a less restless place, where compromise is the rule. Unlike Wauquiez – and Emmanuel Macron – Retailleau attended local Catholic schools, not grand Parisian Lycées and ENA. Also unlike them, he did his military service, in France's grandest cavalry regiment, at Saumur, once attended by General George Patton before WWI. He then progressed in local, then regional politics, almost under the radar even when he became one of the LR grandees. In short, he is a type we'd almost forgotten existed: a soft-spoken grassroots politician, with traditional values and an interest in practical things, led by observation rather than ideology. He may be a classical liberal, yet in 2005 he (unsuccessfully) denounced Jacques Chirac's projected privatisation of the French motorway system, arguing that in the absence of actual competition, it would risklessly transfer state monopolies to private entities. (Two decades on, parliamentary and National Court of Audits reports have pointed out precisely the kind of unchecked profits private conglomerates then made from state-funded infrastructure). Retailleau also voted against the projected 2005 EU Constitution, as well as against its replacement, the Lisbon Treaty in 2006, which he viewed as encroaching on France's sovereignty. Any Home Secretary is usually the target of the Left: the hoary accusation of 'racism' has been levelled against Retailleau when he criticised 'separatism', which in France refers to immigrant communities living in 'cultural bubbles' rather than trying to integrate in the wide French polity. He also riled the Mélenchonistas when said he would use 'every means' to 'reduce immigration' which he said 'doesn't benefit our country'. And after Suella Braverman and Giorgia Meloni, he, too wants to resettle illegal arrivals in third countries, negotiating with Iraq, Kazakhstan and Egypt. It would be enough to make him the usual punching ball of the liberal classes, except that he says these things with unfailing politeness. Leftists have to pay attention to realise he's standing against everything they want to push. As a result, Retailleau has become an acquired taste among many French voters who still have qualms about supporting Marine Le Pen or her youthful party president Jordan Bardella. That's not so much because they're Fascists (they're not) but because they're perceived as incompetent. The selfie-taking screaming Bardella fans are highly visible, but the voting classes are mostly older. Their own self-respect may well lead them decide that a father of three who flat refused to appear with his young family on the cover of Paris Match (a rite of passage for presidential candidates) could be a blessed relief from the publicity-hungry crowd that noisily begged for their votes for decades, never to deliver on their promises.
Local France
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Local France
Anti-immigration minister becomes leader of French conservatives
Retailleau won 74 percent of the vote from party members against 25 percent for Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the party in the French national assembly. Although LR and its allies hold only 60 seats in France's 577-member national assembly and the party candidate barely registered in the 2022 presidential vote, experts predict a better run in 2027 when President Emmanuel Macron must step down. The party is the successor of the UMP, which traces its origins to postwar leader Charles de Gaulle and was the party of former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. These days, however, it is much diminished - in the 2022 presidential election its candidate Valérie Pecresse scored just 4.78 percent of the vote, below the threshold required to get state funding for election expenses. In the 2017 election its candidate François Fillon was felled by a last-minute expenses scandal and scored 20 percent, failing to make it through to the second round of voting. Advertisement Previously seen as a centre-right party, LR has moved sharply to the right as it struggles to find a place for itself within the current political landscape. Its previous leader Eric Ciotti quit the party last year after calling for an alliance with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in the 2024 parliamentary election, leading to memorable scenes in which he barricaded himself in his office to avoid being removed by furious party members. It has wrangled ever since over its stance but has adopted a tougher line on issues such as immigration, with Retailleau echoing far-right talking points on immigration, integration and crime. National opinion polls currently suggest the RN would perform well in the 2027 election, despite being shaken by legal woes for its figurehead Marine Le Pen. Retailleau, previously the LR leader in the Senate, was brought into government as interior minister in 2024 by Michel Barnier. Current PM François Bayrou kept him in post when he formed his government, where he has emerged as one of the most high-profile ministers in the centrist-led coalition government. Following Sunday's result, he said he would stay in the government but he is likely to use his victory to press his case for the presidency. "Our political family is now able to carry our project forward for the presidential election," Retailleau told broadcaster TF1 after the results were announced. Some 80 percent of the 120,000 LR party members took part in the weekend vote for the leader. The LR membership had increased from 43,859 to 121,617 in the two months before the leadership election.
Reuters
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
French interior minister wins contest to lead conservative party
PARIS, May 18 (Reuters) - French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau was voted the new leader of the centre-right Republicans (LR) party on Sunday, bolstering his chances ahead of a 2027 presidential election in which many believe he will run. With just over 74% of the vote in an internal LR election, Retailleau comfortably beat Laurent Wauquiez, who leads the party in France's lower house of parliament. Wauquiez caused outrage during the campaign with a proposal that migrants awaiting deportation should be shipped off to the remote French-controlled islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off Canada's coast. Since becoming interior minister last year, Retailleau has sought to crack down on immigration and drug crime, but has struggled to show strong results on either front. The rise in popularity of Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) has contributed to a right-ward shift in French politics, and Retailleau's high-profile job and conservative views could make him a viable candidate for the 2027 election. "Mr. Retailleau's rhetoric is a clear-cut theft of the National Rally," said RN spokesman Laurent Jacobelli. "If we look at his actions, however, there is a gap between rhetoric and reality." Once a cornerstone of French politics, created by former President Nicolas Sarkozy as a continuation of fellow ex-president Jacques Chirac's party, LR is now a faded force with just 48 seats in parliament, far behind the RN's 123.
Local France
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Local France
French politicians rush to defence of cheese labelled 'bad product'
The controversy is around Comté, the hard cows' milk cheese from the Jura area of eastern France. Despite its popularity - it is the most-eaten AOP cheese in France - Comté came under attack from environmentalist Pierre Rigaux, who told France Inter that Comté has "become a bad product from an ecological point of view". READ MORE: What does the AOP/AOC label on French food and wine mean - and are these products better? He added that the problems stem from intensive dairy farming in the region which result in polluted rivers, and called on people to avoid Comté. His comments naturally sparked a furious reaction from farmers in the eastern Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, while politicians have also rushed to defend the cheese. The local préfet tweeted: "Ban it? You might as well ban sunsets over the Jura! Let's be serious", adding the hashtag TouchePasAuComté (hands off Comté). Politicians on a national level also got involved , with several calling to "protect' Comté. Right-winger Laurent Wauquiez said that the attempts to limit Comté consumption was "the project of a France without identity or flavour". Green party leader Marine Tondelier released a statement from the party to "set the record straight on Comté", saying: "The Ecologistes party has never asked us to stop eating it, far less ban it." Advertisement The local chapter of the party the Franche-Comté Ecologistes also reiterated their support for the dairy industry, "built on cooperative values and exemplary organisation", while adding that it was "not possible to deny the environmental impact of cattle breeding and cheese dairies, even under the AOP label'. The process of making the highly popular Comté cheese forms a major part of the plot in the award-winning French film Vingt Dieux, which has been released in cinemas in the UK, US and Australia under the title Holy Cow.
Local France
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Local France
Outrage after France lawmaker suggests deporting migrants to Atlantic islands
French politics have shifted to the right in recent months, with the government increasingly picking up far-right talking points such as security and immigration. Algeria has refused to take back nationals France has ordered to leave, including a 37-year-old man who went on a stabbing rampage in the French city of Mulhouse in February, killing one person. "I suggest dangerous foreigners under order to leave French territory be locked up in a detention centre in Saint Pierre and Miquelon," Laurent Wauquiez, the parliamentary leader for the right-wing Les Republicains (LR) party, said on Tuesday. "They would have a choice: either go to Saint Pierre and Miquelon or return home," he told right-wing website JDnews. READ MORE: Saint Pierre et Miquelon: Why does France have two islands off the Canadian coast? Saint Pierre and Miquelon, an archipelago of eight islands located just off the Canadian island of Newfoundland, has a population of less than 6,000 people. It is one of several French overseas territories that span the globe. Advertisement Wauquiez, who is vying for the presidency of the LR party against popular Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, said he hoped the island's climate would have a "deterrent effect". "The average yearly temperature is 5C, there are 146 days of rain and snow. I think that quite rapidly, it will make everyone think," he told CNews television broadcaster. Under French law, a prefect -- a local representative of the state -- can order a foreigner who does not have a residency permit or has newly arrived and is deemed a danger to public order to leave the country. At the moment, they have 30 days to leave on their own, or they are detained for a maximum of 60 days and the French administration organises their deportation. Advertisement Wauquiez said the detention period should be extended. 'Shameful' He faced criticism from across the political spectrum. Overseas Minister Manuel Valls, a centrist, rejected the idea. "Forced exile is the method of a settler, not an elected lawmaker," he said. France used to ship prisoners off to the penal colony of Cayenne, or "Devil's Island", in the overseas territory of French Guiana, but that ended in 1953. "The Cayenne jail is long gone and so it should," Valls added. Boris Vallaud, leader of the Socialists in parliament, said what he called Wauquiez's "Guantanamo-on-Sea" proposal was as "shameful" as it was "stupid". The new US administration has sent undocumented migrants to the US military prison of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Even far-right parliamentary leader Marine Le Pen was against the idea. "The place of people under obligation to leave French territory is in their country, certainly not in a French territory," said the three-time presidential candidate, who was sentenced over embezzlement and banned from running in the 2027 race last week. Wauquiez said his idea had not been inspired by US President Donald Trump, but by Australia sending undocumented migrants to the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru. Under a hardline policy introduced in 2012, Australia sent thousands of migrants attempting to reach the country by boat to "offshore processing" centres, including a detention centre on in Nauru. The scheme was gradually scaled back following 14 detainee deaths, multiple suicide attempts, and at least six referrals to the International Criminal Court.
