Election of Bruno Retailleau: "For the Republicans, the real challenge is to move away from a marketing approach"

After months without a voice or a face at their helm, Les Républicains have just appointed a new president. Bruno Retailleau inherits a party that remains fragile, where everything needs to be rebuilt. The internal campaign did not pit radically different fundamental visions against each other: the candidates more or less occupied the same political space. This might seem like a sign of renewed coherence. In reality, this lack of strategic debate underscores the magnitude of the challenges ahead between now and 2027. Starting with the need to dispel illusions.

First illusion: believing in a regained political centrality. LR benefits from increased visibility thanks to its presence in government, after thirteen years in power, and retains a majority in the Senate, whose relative influence is increasing due to divisions in the National Assembly. Bruno Retailleau , who enjoys solid internal popularity, would like to see this as the beginning of a dynamic. But this institutional presence should not mask a continuing electoral erosion.

In 2022, according to Ifop, only 21% of François Fillon's 2017 voters voted for Valérie Pécresse . The rest dispersed: 37% chose Emmanuel Macron, 17% Marine Le Pen, and 16% Éric Zemmour. The movement has since intensified, between a flight to the center and a shift to the far right. In 2024, only 52% of LR voters in 2022 will have renewed their vote for a party candidate. LR is going through the same phase as the Socialist Party a few years ago: that of a profound weakening of its base. The danger is not behind it – it is ahead.

Second illusion: believing that the union of the right would be a lifeline. Retailleau has been careful not to venture onto this terrain. But Laurent Wauquiez's call, at the end of the campaign, for a union ranging from Gérald Darmanin to Sarah Knafo, shows that the idea is gaining ground. And this is no coincidence: it is the fruit of a programmatic shift towards the extreme right , particularly on immigration, which began a long time ago, and which the Minister of the Interior has largely embraced.

Since 2007, the right has been convinced that this is the only winning strategy. Yet, it has not stopped the flight to the RN, which it has even accentuated, while neglecting voters who have moved to the center. The union of the right could keep LR afloat in the short term, but it would complete the normalization of the RN without allowing the Republican right to win back its voters. Those who cross the Rubicon rarely make the return trip. In this bloc, LR will never have the leadership.

Third illusion: thinking that the end of Macronism will automatically lead to a return of center-right voters to LR. This would justify a strategy aimed at seducing the far right before refocusing. But just because a cycle ends doesn't mean everything will go back to the way it was. The tripartite division of the political landscape is likely to last, and the central bloc is full of contenders—from Édouard Philippe to Gabriel Attal —ready to nibble away at the right-wing electorate. Believing that lost voters will eventually "come home" on their own is a pipe dream.

The challenge now is to clarify the political agenda. As political scientist Émilien Houard Vial points out, it remains weak. A few markers—immigration, the " woke peril," denunciation of "welfare"—serve as a compass. But they are partial, often borrowed from others, and do not cover the major political issues of the moment. What does the right say about work, social protection, pensions, youth? Nothing clear. Yet these issues are central to citizens' expectations, even if they fly under the media radar.

The real challenge is to move away from a marketing approach. Politics is not just about occupying space, but about embodying dynamics, without falling into the trap of the providential man, a childhood disease of the right. The right asserts itself when it knows what it wants to preserve—institutions, continuity, a sense of community—and what needs to be transformed. It must embrace a lucid conservatism that sees the world as fragile and worthy of preservation, without rejecting reforms.

And if LR is looking for inspiration, it should avoid looking to Javier Milei or Donald Trump , whose brutality fascinates without building anything. Instead, it should look at Friedrich Merz, the new German chancellor: like a number of tutelary figures of the right, he could make history because he wants to lead Germany into the world of tomorrow by cutting itself off from the heaviness of yesterday. Perhaps this is the condition on which the right will once again become audible, useful, and – why not – central in 2027.