Philippe has in recent weeks faced accusations he was being too quiet and running an overly low-profile campaign. <\/p>\n
According to early polling, he looked to be comfortably the best-placed centrist candidate to beat the far right in the next presidential election<\/a>. But more recent polling<\/a> suggested his lead over former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and conservative leader Bruno Retailleau was narrowing. Both been campaigning hard to overtake Philippe.<\/p>\n During his hour-long speech in Reims, Philippe sketched out his aims for the campaign, <\/strong>hitting several conservative hot-button topics:\u00a0lowering taxes on turnover for French companies,\u00a0slashing red tape, rebalancing the state pension system and fighting crime and drug trafficking.<\/p>\n According to party officials, one of Philippe\u2019s short-term objectives will be to unite the center right around his candidacy, and particularly the conservatives, before trying to widen his appeal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI came from the right \u2026 I\u2019m not going to apologize,\u201d said Philippe, who is a former member of the conservative Les R\u00e9publicains party. \u201cAnd I know where I am, at the head of a rightwing party, and the mayor of Le Havre, a working-class city \u2026 that shows that ideas of freedom and responsibility aren\u2019t only the domain of the right-wing electorate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the coming months, the party is hoping for several heavyweights from rival parties to back Philippe, which would put pressure on Attal and Retailleau, said a Horizons lawmaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philippe has in recent weeks faced accusations he was being too quiet and running an overly low-profile campaign.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[265497,33184,33,2000,299,5187,1105,36,29101,38,53753,265498,42,44,11665,839,617,6565,479,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-951190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-christophe-bechu","9":"tag-edouard-philippe","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-far-right","15":"tag-france","16":"tag-french-election-2027","17":"tag-french-politics","18":"tag-gabriel-attal","19":"tag-gilles-boyer","20":"tag-jordan-bardella","21":"tag-marine-le-pen","22":"tag-meps","23":"tag-middle-east","24":"tag-pensions","25":"tag-populism","26":"tag-tariffs","27":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116552297813252752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}