Laurent Wauquiez wants to make the "territorial divide" a central theme of the presidential campaign

Laurent Wauquiez made his political comeback this Sunday with his traditional ascent of Mont Mézenc. The former president of the Republicans party wants to place the "territorial divide" at the heart of the 2027 presidential election, directly referencing the "social divide" theorized by Jacques Chirac in 1995.

For his fifteenth ascent of Mont Mézenc, Laurent Wauquiez chose to focus his message on "French unity" and the growing disparities, in his view, between different regions. "Today, I would like to talk to you about a challenge that is very close to my heart. A challenge that is too often absent from political debates," he declared.

Following in the footsteps of Jacques Chirac

The MP for Haute-Loire draws a clear parallel with Jacques Chirac's presidential campaign in 1995. "This divide echoes Jacques Chirac's decisive intuition when he diagnosed the social divide," he believes, praising a former president who, in his view, was able to "build the rallying of the entire right wing."

Eight months before the presidential election, Laurent Wauquiez has thus defined what he considers one of the major challenges of the vote: "to repair the territorial divide in order to reconcile France." This is a way of putting rural and peripheral areas back at the center of the debate and of highlighting his difference within a right wing already very crowded as 2027 approaches.