On December 8, Les Républicains plan at a convention on the issue of work and purchasing power.
A good connoisseur of these subjects speaks there.
Eric Woerth, the president (LR) of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, “Mr. Economy” within the party?
No, the boss of the CFDT Laurent Berger, more used to social democratic spans.
As a symbol of the distance that the Gaullist party wants to take from the liberal orientation that François Fillon had followed.
Eric Woerth, invited to introduce the meeting, preferred to boycott it.
"There are certain ideas with which I apply the barrier gestures", explains today the former Minister of the Budget, not at ease with certain social markers posed by the direction LR, under the impulse of the vice-president delegate Guillaume Peltier and secretary general Aurélien Pradié.
The first underlined in mid-January to have "points in common" with Arnaud Montebourg, in particular on the reinvention of liberalism, when the second proposes a universal income and ensures, like the former Minister of Productive Recovery of François Hollande, that the debt does not will never be refunded.
Add to that the glances that the favorite of the polls, Xavier Bertrand, addresses to the same Arnaud Montebourg and the liberals of LR are starting to see red.
Too red for a party whose "DNA is economic credibility", according to the deputy of Indre, Nicolas Forissier.
He and other parliamentarians will be involved in a new working group in the Assembly devoted to economic issues.
Objective: "to complement the proposals of the party", slips diplomatically the elected.
“We are at a turning point.
Either we re-establish our fundamentals, or we go into a maelstrom ", he warns, regretting a" gurgle in the current public debate ".
"Let's stop making right-wing Mélenchon"
“The reindustrialization of our country is essential.
Only, we will not get there by decree but with a competitiveness policy, ”adds his colleague from Seine-et-Marne, Jean-Louis Thiériot, who also intends to get involved in this working group.
"When I hear that we are going to look for Montebourg, it hurts my right," says the president of the Pays de la Loire region, Christelle Morancais.
“We are out of step with our electorate.
If Macron is so high in the polls, it may be because I am not the only one to think so.
Let's stop doing right-wing Mélenchon, ”worries the one who is also LR vice-president.
"To say that the future is Montebourg, that is to say that the future passes through the door of the cemetery", strangles Eric Woerth who spoke directly to Xavier Bertrand last Friday, during a small- lunch.
“We need credible ideas, not wacky ideas to attract customers.
Increasing purchasing power can only be the result of an efficient production and qualification system ”, he adds, supported by the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, for whom the sovereignty of France passes through its "Competitiveness".
"Let's stop the false quarrels, we agree on the essentials," says Guillaume Peltier.
Those who sometimes define themselves as "Labor" say they reject "liberalism" just as much as "socialism".
“Nothing very serious, abounds Aurélien Pradié.
All this is largely overplayed by some who worry about no longer being at the center of right-wing ideas.
In 1995 as in 2007, Chirac and Sarkozy had cranky people around them who lacked a little imagination.
The Republicans have not finished working on the issue of work and purchasing power.