France’s Republicains elect former EU affairs minister as leader

France’s Les Républicains have elected Laurent Wauquiez, a former EU affairs minister, as their leader at a time when the conservative party is seeking to repair the damage inflicted by a disastrous presidential campaign.

Mr Wauquiez, 42, was elected with 74.6 per cent of the vote after about 100,000 Les Republicains members had cast their ballots electronically on Sunday. The conservative Catholic, who heads the powerful Rhône-Alpes region, was competing against Mael de Calan, a protégé of Alain Juppé, Bordeaux’s mayor, and Florence Portelli.

“Tonight is the beginning of a new era for the right — we can say the right is back,” Mr Wauquiez told supporters on Sunday evening. “We had lost, we were divided and we had disappointed the French. We are going to rebuild: now we are going to renew the party with new faces.”

The Republicains have struggled in the wake of the defeat of their scandal-stricken presidential nominee, François Fillon. A former prime minister, Mr Fillon failed to qualify for the presidential run-off after being placed under formal investigation over allegations of misuse of public funds. He denies the allegations and the case is continuing.

Tonight is the beginning of a new era for the right — we can say the right is back. We had lost, we were divided and we had disappointed the French. We are going to rebuild: now we are going to renew the party with new faces

Divided and demoralised, the rightwing party has endured watching moderate figures flee to La République en Marche, the centrist party of President Emmanuel Macron. The president enjoys a large majority in parliament and is carrying out policies long advocated by the centre-right.

Now with Mr Wauquiez at its helm, Les Republicains are likely to shift even more firmly to the right to try to widen their shrinking electoral base. In meetings in the past weeks, Mr Wauquiez has advocated trying to attract “those voters who voted for the [far-right] National Front” by developing an anti-immigration, identity-based platform. More moderate party rivals have criticised the strategy as too narrow. They have pointed out that a similar move by Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, while successful in 2007, had backfired and boosted the National Front five years later.

But political analysts point out that this may be the only strategy left for Les Republicains in the short term to counter Mr Macron’s centrist force on the party.

Mr Macron has poached three Republicains for his government, including Edouard Philippe, prime minister, and Bruno Le Maire, finance minister. In the National Assembly, a group of MPs has also split with the party by vowing to help Mr Macron. Some of them eventually joined En Marche while others created another party, Agir, or Act.

The defections have underlined the large support Republicain supporters have for Mr Macron’s economic reform, including his bill to make the labour market more flexible, and tax breaks for the wealthy and entrepreneurs.

Mr Wauquiez outlined on Sunday evening the themes he would use to fight the president: “The government is complacent with communitarianism; he lacks firmness against Islamist extremism,” he said.

“I believe the ideas of the right are a majority in France,” he added. “We are going to recreate a hope on the right.”