Away from the presidential ball, the head of the DR deputies says he is working behind the scenes on the future gathering of candidates from the right and the center. And plays already placed.
To celebrate his 51st birthday on April 12, his wife Charlotte had a surprise in store for him: two seats at La Scala in Paris for the concert of Frédéric Lo and Michel Houellebecq, his idol, the holy grail of this great scholar.
“He’s a giant. I put him in the same category as Proust or Céline.”says the boss of the deputies of the Republican Right, who concedes: “It was sublime, but you have to take the Prozac at the end! HAS” It has already been a year since his Élysé dream collapsed: on May 18, 2025, Bruno Retailleau won against him with 74% of the votes of activists in the party battle.
This was without counting on the resilience of this extraordinary political animal and his ability to reinvent himself. The Rhône-Alpes know it, they are out of the game for 2027 at this stage. He must resolve to watch from afar the ballet of candidates which follow one another within the old common base: Gabriel Attal this Friday, after Édouard Philippe and Bruno Retailleau. This does not prevent him from actively preparing for what comes next.
If we had been told that he would one day compete with the patriarch of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, in the role of great unifier, we would have smiled. Who would have imagined the ex- « lonesome cow-boy » playing the missi dominici to allow the center and the “Remondian straight lines”as he says, to meet again when the time comes, when the polls or a hypothetical primary – for which he continues to plead – will have done their work by the end of 2026? He who had achieved the feat of alienating himself from almost this entire political arc has been multiplying advice and meetings for months.
« Bromance »
It is with the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, that the « bromance » is the most striking. The two men became closer, appearing together on 1is May on his lands in Haute-Loire. “Sébastien needed a trusted partner. Me too”he explains. Note the use of the first name.
In search of support in a fragmented Assembly, the head of government listens to him. It was Wauquiez who suggested the increase in the fuel premium announced this Thursday. He also who urged him to concentrate these new measures on “France that works”struck according to him by« ultrapaupérisation ».
In a small committee, the former mayor of Puy-en-Velay, where the Yellow Vest crisis was fierce, describes a social anger ready to ignite on purchasing power. The presidential election? The French are not there, he retorts: “They have a survival instinct. HAS”
“They know that it was not the government that struck the match in the vat of nitroglycerin.”he reassures himself. But for how long? He therefore urges his 48 deputies not to outbid each other, by ruling out expensive measures which would widen the deficit. The RN’s proposal to reduce VAT at the pump to 5.5%? “It’s nonsense”he exclaims.
“I won’t say anything bad about Wauquiez, we get along wellâ€
Likewise, he entered into a non-aggression pact with “Gabriel” – Attal means –, his counterpart in the Renaissance group. Between them, the knives were drawn for a long time, when the two ambitious people engaged in fierce blows from Jarnac in the Hemicycle. “I won’t say anything bad about Wauquiez, we get along wellâ€confided the now candidate a few months ago to journalists looking for deadly secrets.
Having also gone through the roller coaster of a dissolution which saw him suddenly leave Matignon, Attal recognizes in his eldest a great resistance: “He took a 33 ton with its 26% (in May 2025 Editor’s note). Many politicians would have curled up in a ball under the duvet; he was back the next day at the Assembly »he praised again.
It is perhaps with Édouard Philippe that the reunion is the most confusing. The former head of government has always been very wary of Wauquiez, whom he worked with for a long time at LR. However, they have met several times in recent months, in April in particular, to discuss the project of an expanded primary ranging from the boss of Horizons to the muse of Reconquête, Sarah Knafo.
The mayor of Le Havre, in a dominant position, has little interest in it. The main thing is elsewhere: they talk to each other. As with the Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, with whom contact was broken. « We have redomesticated »slips Wauquiez. This Wednesday, finally, as revealed by our colleagues from Politicohe spoke with former Prime Minister Jean Castex, often presented as a potential recourse.
Wauquiez, a new version of Borloo?
With Laurent Wauquiez, it is always important to look for the hidden strategy. Because the person concerned, although capable of going astray, is often one step ahead. His analysis is clear: faced with the risk of seeing the RN and LFI squatting in the second round in 2027, coming together is a vital obligation.
Unlike Bruno Retailleau, convinced that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is overrated, he bets that the Insoumis will oscillate “between 18 and 22%” in the first round, in a position to qualify. “We must be able to produce a candidate with 25%”he urges. We clearly understood that he was not thinking about himself, lucid about the polls which are currently blocking his path, even if he has not given up on anything.
Its goal: to become the pivot between the candidates of the right and the center. Its mission: “gathering agent provocateur”explains a relative, aware of the counter-intuitive nature of the statement. A new version of Jean-Louis Borloo, in short, the only one capable of putting so many contrary ambitions around the table.
Mission: to become essential
This is what we call playing for position, making oneself unavoidable, the best way to then snatch a royal ministry, and who knows Matignon. Laurent Wauquiez is already pleading for a common programmatic platform around four key ideas: fewer taxes, less assistance, more security and purchasing power.
“We have an absolute collective imperative. It was not the sense of wisdom that fell upon me. I have my strong points and my weak points »confesses the one who claims to have put aside his solitary side.
It is clear that he has earned his managerial stripes at the helm of the DR group. “There was a personal change in him: yes, he gave in for a time to frenzied political individualismadmits one of his followers. But he understood that nothing would change with solitary escapes. The race of small horses is good but it doesn’t take you far.”. Notice to those who always imagine him as Machiavelli: it is not forbidden, in politics, to amend oneself.
