'Unprecedented': French right-wing party leader backs alliance with far right

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00:00There we can now bring in our international affairs editor Angela Diffley. Angela,

00:04a lot of things happening over the past hour or so here in France. It's really unprecedented,

00:09isn't it, that Eric Ciotti would even suggest getting into the bed with the far right?

00:14Yeah, Clovis saying that this has been a red line all the time. This is Nicolas Sarkozy's old party,

00:22as he said. Ciotti is banking on the fact that ordinary voters out there in the country who do

00:30frequently say when they are spoken to by MPs, you know, why don't the people on the right get

00:37together? I would vote for you. Of course, very many also say if you do get to the right,

00:40I won't vote for you. But he presumably has done his sums. Yes, some big names in the

00:48party will leave, will position themselves. There is a lot of very ugly mudslinging going on down

00:53there where Clovis is. It's not a happy meeting. But he has probably done his sums and worked out

01:01that this will garner votes and that it is the right thing to do in terms of his people getting

01:09their seats. If you look at the programmes between the mainstream right, Ciotti's Les

01:16Républicains party and the Rassemblement National, there isn't an awful lot of difference.

01:24So it's unfair to call them centre right as well. They should be called right wing.

01:29People's labels depend very much on where they position themselves. I think it's very much to

01:34do with, as Clovis talked about, the history behind them. For very many people, the Rassemblement

01:40National and very many people within the mainstream right think that they will forever be tainted by

01:46the fact that this party is rooted in the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Marine Le Pen,

01:52who ousted him from the party. But for many people, it will be forever tainted by that.

01:57And it will always be a step too far. It is less about their manifestos and their programmes,

02:03because since Marine Le Pen backed down on France leaving the European, backed down on France

02:09leaving the Euro, there are differences. Of course, there are. But they're not as big as all that.

02:14And if you look at very many of the issues which are now in the Rassemblement National

02:20manifesto, not long ago, they were mainstream right wing policies. So it's much less about

02:25policy. It's more about a gut reaction. And very many people cannot stomach this. And of course,

02:30very many senior people in the mainstream right are positioning themselves for the

02:36presidentials when they will say, we had nothing to do with this, because they are convinced

02:42that any alliance with the Rassemblement National will just expose that the Rassemblement National

02:48are amateurish and will not be able to deliver. That's a risky bet they're taking. And clearly,

02:53Eric Ciotti is doing this because we even saw that the Socialist Party doing so well

02:57on Sunday, based on the 2022 presidential and even National Assembly vote. I want to

03:03talk about the alliance on the left side of the political spectrum here in France,

03:07because there has been an alliance that was announced last night. But that's not ironclad,

03:12is it? It isn't. And you say they did that. Well, they did well compared to a dismal showing

03:18in 2022. So after the 2022 presidential elections, the far left really were the dominant force

03:27on the left in France. And the veteran campaigner Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has a name recognition

03:34outside of France, he was the person calling the shots. That's not the case this time. The person

03:39who did best on the left is Raphael Glucksmann, who could even be described as left of centre,

03:45certainly centre-left. He has clear red lines. And he at one point was reported today he had

03:51walked out of any negotiations for a grouping together. It's a bit unclear what's going on

03:56right now. But he feels and his people feel that he should be the dominant force and his ideas

04:04should be the dominant force. So they need to work all that out. It's still not unclear. We were told

04:09it was all wrapped up. It clearly isn't. So that's what's going on on the left. We're saying that this

04:14dissolution, 66% of the French people from the far left, less so, but still 50%, if you look at

04:22polls today, right through to the far right, are pleased with this decision by Macron. But he has

04:27taken the most gigantic gamble. A risky bet. We'll see what happens. Thank you very much for that,

04:34Angela. Angela Diffley there.

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