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French President Emmanuel Macron and National Rally leader Marine Le Pen saw their respective parties stumble on Sunday as incumbent conservatives surged ahead in the first round of regional elections marred by a record-low turnout. Sunday’s regional polls had been described as a dress rehearsal for next year’s presidential election – but by 8pm, the putative protagonists of the Elysée contest had witnessed their respective parties falter at the polls. Ms Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) was hoping to lead in as many as six of mainland France’s 13 regions, putting it on course to win its first-ever region – or more – in the June 27 runoff.
However, the party topped just one contest, in the southern Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur region, securing only a wafer-thin lead in a race it had hoped to run away with.
Meanwhile, President Macron saw his party suffer another humiliating defeat at the polls, a year after its dismal performance in municipal elections.
Sunday’s vote was a boost for a trio of conservative incumbents harbouring presidential ambitions, though.
Xavier Bertrand in the northern Hauts-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse in the Paris area, and former party leader Laurent Wauquiez, who almost clinched an outright victory in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes with a staggering 45 percent of the vote.
Of the three, Mr Bertrand was seen as facing the toughest re-election campaign in an impoverished region that has long been a prime target of Ms Le Pen’s party.
In the end, he trounced his rival from the National Rally.
Earlier this year, the head of London-based think-tank Euro Intelligence, Wolfgang Munchau, had warned Mr Macron and the EU about Mr Bertrand and his 2022 French presidential election bid.
He wrote: “The French President might be worried about Xavier Bertrand, a high-profile former member of Les Républicains and potential 2022 candidate who is close with the [fishing] industry.
“Bertrand is president of the Hauts-de-France region.
“He served as health minister under Jacques Chirac and labour minister under Nicolas Sarkozy.
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In 2014, the former health minister said he no longer believed in the French-German pas-de-deux at the heart of the European project.
He told Le Journal du Dimanche: “It’s not the be-all and end-all of French politics.
“Take energy – I don’t see how we can have a common policy when our interests are so different.”
In 1992, he led the campaign for the ‘no’ to the Maastricht Treaty in his department, the Aisne in the region of Picardy.
However, he pronounced himself strongly in favour of a European Constitution for the referendum on May 29, 2005.
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