Ousted from the leadership of the Republicans, Aurélien Pradié is strong to reconnect with the popular right, a daring bet which badly masks, according to his detractors, personal ambitions as 2027 approaches.
"What is it that for 15 years we have forgotten the popular right?" Friday in front of students from Science-Po Bordeaux, the former number 2 justifies his position at length: "I am not at all trying to mislead the right but to remind it of what it was when it won".
His move, planned for a long time, does not go unnoticed, a week after his ousting by Eric Ciotti, that the intransigence of his second on long careers has exasperated in the debate on pensions.
"I made myself heard, that may be one reason for the problem," said the Lot deputy after a "not particularly pleasant" week.
"He acted more out of personal ambition for media visibility than on the very merits of the reform," said Senator LR Stéphane Le Rudulier on Wednesday.
Because some lend great ambitions to the deputy of Lot, elected since 2017 on this land of the left. "He lays the groundwork" with a view to a presidential candidacy, says a close friend of Eric Ciotti.
The president of LR intends to nominate as candidate Laurent Wauquiez, today the best hope of a bloodless right.
The 36-year-old MP, who intends to "stay loyal to LR" and "not fuel the division", sweeps away speculation of "I am much simpler than it seems". But the one who, "a little superstitious", had never visited the National Assembly before becoming a deputy, admits that he did not visit the Elysée either - "do not see any connection", specifies he.
Among the few hundred students who came to listen to him on Friday, Alexandre d'Halluin, 20, sees in Aurélien Pradié "an interesting voice, attached to openness. He is ambitious, his youth and the voice he carries are a chance for the party.
- "Electoral niche" -
"What you are looking for is division!" However, a spectator of the public meeting he held a few hours later in Pessac said. "It bothers me a lot to have seen you encouraged by the Nupes" in the National Assembly, adds another.
The room is however won over to his cause and applauds him several times, while Aurélien Pradié justifies himself again. “Thank you for not being just ciottismo”, intervenes a spectator. “I congratulate you on your convictions,” adds another. What comfort the deputy in the idea that he is "not alone".
Although he is supported by several deputies, Aurélien Pradié remains little known to the general public, recalls Frédéric Dabi of Ifop.
"He has undoubtedly scored points" in the retirement sequence, "but the road is very long for him to become an essential right-wing personality," he says.
And its positioning places it "on an electoral niche", estimates Mr. Dabi, all the more exposed as it tenses the liberal wing of LR attached to budgetary control.
"It is audible today because whatever it costs has gone through it," said Othman Nasrou, the party's first deputy secretary general. But "from the popular right to the populist right which is content to tell people what they want to hear, there is only one step", he warns.
Still, the right, which won 4.8% in the presidential election, speaks mainly to retirees and the wealthy classes. Since the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, "it has declined on the assets, the middle classes, who left for the National Rally", notes Bernard Sananes of the Elabe Institute.
With his speech peppered with references to "French people who work hard" and allusions to his baker brother, Aurélien Pradié warns: "if we don't go to conquer voters to whom we no longer speak, next time we will 3% in the presidential election!".
Waiting for the end of Emmanuel Macron's five-year term to hope to win the day, he warns, "it's the logic of an annuitant".
02/24/2023 21:15:35 - Pessac (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
