Emmanuel Macron assures that Borne has all his "confidence" after the controversy on the far right

Europe 1 with AFP 13:53 p.m., May 31, 2023

Emmanuel Macron assured Wednesday that Elisabeth Borne had all his "confidence", the day after a statement that appeared as a reframing of his Prime Minister on how to counter the National Rally. "I think that indeed we can no longer beat the far right in our democracies simply with historical and moral arguments," the French president told reporters in Bratislava, while Elisabeth Borne had judged that the RN was an "heir of Pétain".

"When I have things to say to the Prime Minister (...), I say it"

However, "I want to reiterate here all my confidence," he added, ensuring that his principle was never to make a clarification concerning it other than one-on-one. Participants in Tuesday's Council of Ministers reported that the head of state seemed to have reframed his prime minister by affirming, in front of his troops, that the fight against the far right could no longer pass "by moral arguments". He was harshly criticized Wednesday by the right and the left, who accused him of "trivializing" Marine Le Pen's party.

"I have a simple mode of operation when I have things to say to the prime minister for six years, I say it in a singular conference from which nothing comes out and we settle things together," Macron said Wednesday. "I never do it around the table of the Council of Ministers, through the media," he insisted. The President of the Republic, however, reaffirmed to the press his position on the far right, recalling that he had beaten Marine Le Pen twice in the second round of the presidential election.

Insufficient arguments

"I have always considered that this fight was done in the name of values and was also done in the name of reality. And what I have always fought is the lies and denials of reality that are those used by the extremes and in particular the extreme right," he explained. He believed that invoking "historical and moral arguments" was insufficient "because this far right has transformed" and "it has many voters today who do not vote for this story but vote because they say to themselves, we have not yet tried this."

"And so the fight against the far right is also a fight for reality, for concrete. By reindustrializing the country, by telling the truth about public accounts, by carrying out courageous reforms, sometimes unpopular, when necessary, because the far right can only thrive on denial of reality," he insisted.