The phrase was unearthed on May 25 by Annie Genevard in Le Journal du Dimanche. Bruno Retailleau had just been triumphantly elected as leader of the Republican Party. “This new dynamic should give us the ambition to be as widely present as possible (…) to once again see the blue wave in our region”, said the Minister of Agriculture, referring to the 2026 municipal elections. The new leader of the right took up this ambition over the summer. Then everything changed: Bruno Retailleau awkwardly left the government, Annie Genevard remained in office but lost her post as president of her party’s nominating committee.
The term still exists. It happened in 2014, the year when the UMP, the ancestor of the LR then led by Jean-François Copé, carried out raids passing through 433 to 572 cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants: Toulouse, Limoges, Angers, Reims, Tours, Saint-Étienne, etc. Less than two years after Nicolas Sarkozy’s defeat in the presidential election, the far right toppled the already weak Socialist Party at the start of François Hollande’s five-year term. The foundations of the left-wing government have been shaken and this election remains etched in the collective memory as a demonstration of strength.
In the current context, are Republicans and their centrist allies really capable of replicating that kind of performance? Isn’t this more of a burden than a reproducible model? The four leaders of the LR-UDI alliance had lunch together on Wednesday 12 November to discuss this: Bruno Retailleau, Hervé Marseille, his counterpart from the center, Gérard Larcher, president of the Senate, and Mathieu Darnaud, leader of the right wing in the upper house. All observers of the electoral map, all understand the fragmentation of the national political field and are aware of what will be seen in the eyes of France on March 22.
“Our number one problem is poaching,” awakened the quartet’s advisors. Among the mayors elected in 2014, there were several who replaced their UMP labels with Horizons labels. This is the case of Christophe Béchu at Angers, Arnaud Robinet at Reims or Christian Estrosi at Nice. If they are re-elected, Bruno Retailleau will find it difficult to take ownership of their victory, especially as relations between Les Républicains and Édouard Philippe’s party have become tense in several key cities, such as Paris and Strasbourg. As for Jean-Luc Moudenc, the outgoing council member in Toulouse, he will go under the flag “others are correct”. Which one will survive “first label in France”recalls the strategist quoted above.
If the LR-UDI bloc can hope for stability, defeat is possible in Saint-Etienne, where Gaël Perdriau is on trial for blackmailing a “sextape” against his former first deputy, or even in Nîmes, where the risk of an RN victory could give the left an advantage against a disorderly right. Will they be compensated by success in Besançon? According to close friend Laurent Wauquiez, who is seeking ties with the far-right Reconquête movement, Annie Genevard’s call for a “blue wave” was “unwise.”
“At 8pm on TF1, what will Gilles Boulleau say? We all know that on the evening of the second round, France will see 15 or 20 of the biggest cities, remembering this faithfully, and when I hear “blue wave,” I hear “progress.” However, if we look around, it is difficult to identify cities that will shift, or even stay, to the right. »
