Édouard Philippe

It seems that she might be wanting to play a role, certainly not standing.

as a candidate but she is the former finance minister first woman to hold that post during the mandate of former president Nicolas Sarkozy so she's conservative centre-right certainly those centrist and centre-right candidates like Edouard Philippe, Gabrielle Attal and Bruno Retailleur are trailing well behind the two populist candidates Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon so perhaps they are hoping that there could be a burst of energy some injection of positivity into their campaigns if Christine Lagarde does come back here in February once she's finished up in Frankfurt.

From bureaus worldwide, this is FSN.

With FSN Spotlight, I'm Simon Marks.

It was a movement against taxes on high fuel.

The prime minister of the time under Emmanuel Macron was Edouard Philippe, who is paradoxically a center-right politician.

And he decided to increase taxes in order to finance the ecological, the green transition.

And this triggered this movement.

But I personally, even the post that just came out to show a bit of a weakening on this side, I don't see a major loss of momentum.

And then on the center, the centrist candidates, I mean, who are they? How are they doing? You know, there's, is it Glucksmann and Philippe? Yeah, so

you have a flurry of centrist candidates.

I think there would be what I call sort of, you know, polling Darwinism.

So, you know, as we get closer to the election, those who are doing very badly in the polls will eventually step out.

And as they do that, there will be some redistribution of their votes.

So what I think will happen, for instance, between the two leading candidates on the center right, Philippe and Attal, one of them is going to step down at some point.

Philippe would like for this to take place now.

Some far right, some middle right, some centrist right.

And one candidate who is sort of the front runner for that constellation of party, what used to be the UMP, is called Édouard Philippe.

I think he's around 13 or 14% in the polls.

So very low.

And right now, Marine Le Pen is right now leading drastically with 53% of the odds to win.

There's also Edouard Philippe at 15% and David Lisnard at 11%.

And so a lot of people are projecting and thinking that Marine Le Pen is going to win today.

in April to be the next president of France.

I'm not into, you know, actually, I would prefer, of course, like if I had the chance to support a French native candidate, but...

There isn't, really.

Like you mentioned, Edouard Philippe, he's basically like...

He was a minister under Macron's presidency, and he's the same shit.

But the interesting thing is who is in the second round with her.

And if it's Edouard Philippe, who's the kind of center right candidate, or if it's Raphael Glucksmann, who's a left wing center left candidate who's just been chosen in a primary by the left.

If it's either of those two, there could be a kind of ganging up on the far right by everybody else in France.

So then you'd have the center left, the sort of left part of the center right, the center, the far left.

They would all vote against Le Pen.

So there is a chance that she could be beaten either by someone from the center right or the center left.

So either at the moment it's Edouard Philippe on the right or the center right.

and it's Raphael Glucksmann on the left.

Of the three candidates considered here, Melenchon's program is perhaps most vulnerable to political epistemological critique.

Finally, there is Edouard Philippe, who appears set to continue Macron's technocracy.

Philippe's pitch amounts to a promise of competence.

He will manage immigration and cut the budget deficit toward 2% of GDP.