Valerie Pecresse fever! French right backs new threat to Macron

Valerie Pecresse is a moderate conservative who has called herself ‘two-thirds Merkel, one-third Thatcher’.

Valerie Pecresse embraces Eric Ciotti after after winning the primary in Paris on Saturday night. Picture: AFP

She has described herself as the only person able to defeat Emmanuel Macron – and members of the French President’s entourage ­appear to agree.

But does Valerie Pecresse, head of the greater Paris Ile-de-France region, have what it takes to ­become the first woman to make it into the Elysee?

Ms Pecresse, 54, a moderate conservative who has called herself “two-thirds Merkel, one-third Thatcher”, won the overwhelming backing late on Saturday of the Republicans to be their candidate in next April’s election, beating Eric Ciotti, 56, a little-known ­figure on the right, by winning 69 per cent of the vote to Ciotti’s 31 per cent.

As supporters at party HQ chanted “Valerie, Valerie”, Ms ­Pecresse began her acceptance speech by praising the boldness of “the party of General de Gaulle, of Georges Pompidou, of Jacques Chirac and of Nicolas Sarkozy” in choosing a female candidate for the first time. “The Republican right is back,” she said. “It is united and it is going into battle.”

Flanked by her besuited male rivals, Ms Pecresse, in a bright red jacket, took swipes at Mr Macron and his policy “zig zags” and also at the divisive nature of her opponents on the far right, adding: “We are going to turn the page on ­Macron, but without tearing up the pages of the history of France.”

Ms Pecresse’s victory was the culmination of a two-stage primary among the Republicans’ 140,000 members that saw the surprise elimination on Thursday of the two favourites, Michel ­Barnier, 70, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, and Xavier Bertrand, 56, head of the Hauts-de-France region.

It came as Paris braced itself for unrest on Sunday with about 20,000 supporters of Eric Zemmour, 63, a far-right polemicist turned presidential candidate, ­expected to attend his first public meeting, in Villepinte in the northeast suburbs, since he formalised his own bid last Tuesday. Thousands of his opponents are due to march through the capital in protest.

The Republicans’ choice of Ms Pecresse, a protegee of Chirac and a minister more than a decade ago under Mr Sarkozy, could be bad news for Mr Macron, 43, expected next month to confirm his own clear intention to seek re-election.

Topping the polls with a steady 23 to 24 per cent, the President looks assured of a place in the second round run-off, in which it was long taken as a given that he would face – and comfortably beat – Marine Le Pen, 53, the far-right leader, who remains anathema to many voters despite her drive in recent years to detoxify her ­National Rally party by moving it in from the far right.

Ms Pecresse, who is economically liberal but socially conser­vative, may prove a trickier opponent for Mr Macron. Like her fellow contenders for the Republicans’ nomination, she has tacked to the right in recent weeks, especially on immigration and law and order, to appeal to an increasingly conservative electorate.

Yet she is also the candidate of a party that has been a dominant force in French politics since the days of de Gaulle. According to Mathieu Gallard, research director at pollsters Ipsos France, this means she stands a chance of beating Mr Macron if they face each other in a run-off. “It will certainly not be easy, but it is possible,” he said, suggesting she could draw on votes not just from her own party, but also from those who backed Mr Zemmour and Ms Le Pen in the first round. In such a situation, he thinks, the President may struggle to mobilise voters on the left, “who could say: ‘Macron or Pecresse, there is no difference ­between them’.”

Yet Ms Pecresse must first make it through to the second round, which will be much harder: polls so far have put her on just 10 to 11 per cent, far behind both Ms Le Pen, who is on about 20 per cent, and Mr Zemmour, who, after an initial surge, has slipped back to 13 per cent. In a first reaction, Ms Le Pen, attending a congress of far-right parties in Poland this weekend, dismissed Ms Pecresse as being virtually indistinguishable from Mr Macron in style and substance.

The Sunday Times