Virginie Calmels is a business leader and former deputy vice-president of the Republicans.
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In view of the results of the recent polls, the left-right divide appears to many to be increasingly obsolete.
The election and re-election of Emmanuel Macron seem to have marked, then confirmed, France's split between globalists and sovereignists.
The globalists appear as supporters of an uncontrolled liberalism, so decried by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his cronies;
the sovereignists present themselves, conversely, as supporters of a strong nation, endowed with a powerful State, untied from any supranational control, they are also supporters of protectionism or even assumed autarky.
The emergence of these two blocks very quickly became the subject of shortcuts, caricatures, exaggerations and even anathemas by each of the supporters of the two visions.
But dividing our country into two ideological camps ends up being misleading and too simplistic.
By opposing liberalism and sovereignism, we forget too quickly that these two doctrines can feed, complement and therefore mutually reinforce each other.
In order for individual freedoms to flourish, develop, grow favorably, and for the market to operate smoothly, it is necessary to have a sovereign state.
Virginie Calmels
Indeed, the freedom to act requires being sovereign over one's decisions.
Thus, in order for individual freedoms to flourish, develop, grow favorably, and for the market to operate smoothly, it is necessary to have a sovereign State, endowed with democratic institutions and capable of establishing a framework simple and clear rules.
Individual freedoms will cease to be demanded since they will be effective.
Conversely, if the state tends to take care of everything, to interfere inefficiently, saturating the public space with its constant presence, sovereignism will fall into the throes of statism.
Sovereignty must promote an effective and strong state in areas limited to the sovereign: security, public freedoms, migratory flows, defense, as a priority, rather than a state overwhelmed by its omnipotence.
Moreover, liberalism and sovereignty can be effective and complementary allies since to find the right leeway for effective and sovereign public action, it is necessary to reduce public spending and to trust private actors in order to raise the French economic growth.
At a time when the French public debt has reached nearly 115% of GDP, and compulsory levies 44.5% of GDP, we can legitimately wonder about our real capacity for action, about our possible room for maneuver because the question economic and budgetary dependence can very quickly arise.
Let us remember, even if comparison is not right, the Greek crisis of 2014… Let us add that the planned economy, wherever it was implemented, very quickly showed its limits.
With the consequences of great troubles, first economic, then political.
The only acceptable liberalism must not be unbridled, excessive or overflowing.
It must not interfere with public services, nor deny the foundations of the nation.
Virginie Calmels
The political philosopher Pierre Manent says it very well: for him freedom is synonymous with action.
Freedom is desirable if you do something good with it.
It must, he says, be accompanied by a sense of confidence in one's own strengths.
This freedom must therefore be inextricably linked to confidence in the nation, in its future, in its capacities, in its destiny.
The only acceptable liberalism must not be unbridled, excessive or overflowing.
It must not interfere with public services, nor deny the foundations of the nation.
Liberalism and sovereignism must therefore join forces.
Only the right is today carrying such a synthesis, in terms of vision and convictions, but also by the complementarity of those - men and women of experience - who represent it.
Remember that this political project carried by the right in 2017, proposing this synthesis between an assumed economic freedom and a powerful sovereign, without however unduly weakening the social aspect, the basis of living together, won more than 20% of the votes in the appalling political and media context that we know.
Faced with the obvious danger that a victory for the Nupes would represent, or faced with the danger of the immobility of "at the same time", the reconstruction of the right, starting with its presence in the National Assembly in a significant proportion, is a absolute necessity.
Either to make it possible to pass the essential courageous reforms (that of pensions among others), within the framework of a real coalition agreement with the current majority by consolidating an absolute majority for it;
either to prepare for the future in order to avoid in five years a political offer reduced to the extremes or to the incumbents exhausted by ten years of power.
If for many right-wing voters, faced with the push from the extremes, the useful vote for the presidential election was Emmanuel Macron, next Sunday the useful vote must be LR.
