Villepin tells voters to be patient: he will run, and rules out Philippe and Attal

He is not a candidate yet, but he will be. Speaking on France Inter on Tuesday 3 November, Dominique de Villepin removed the last doubt about his intentions for 2027, while refusing to set a date for his official declaration.

Speaking on France Inter, Dominique de Villepin said he did not think adding a candidacy would bring anything amid the general anger in the country, but he reassured listeners, telling them to be patient and saying that, as far as he was concerned, there were no doubts.

Campaigning in all but name for several months, Jacques Chirac's former prime minister denied he was waiting for an upturn in the polls, which currently put him at between 1% and 3% of first-round voting intentions, according to Le Parisien. He replied that this was simply because he was not yet a candidate, and that things would change on the day he became one.

Neither the centrist bloc nor Mélenchon

Dominique de Villepin presents himself as an alternative voice to what he describes as two extremes crushing the whole debate, and to centrist candidates who, in his view, keep sliding.

He confirmed his refusal to take part in the "democrats' primary" proposed by Gabriel Attal. He said the leading figures of the centrist bloc today are the heirs of Macronism, and that he therefore has no link whatsoever with its representatives, before driving the point home: there will be no alliance with either Édouard Philippe or Gabriel Attal.

Despite being more popular today on the left than on the right, as BFMTV notes, he also rules out any rapprochement with the leader of La France insoumise. He insisted that the policies he wants to pursue have nothing to do with those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. His creed: sovereignty, an independent foreign policy and the rebuilding of a strong state.

The context: right and centre in disarray

His remarks come in the middle of a battle over organising a primary between the right and the centre. Édouard Philippe, still the best placed in his camp in the polls despite a dip, has turned down the proposal from Gabriel Attal, who nonetheless considers a primary inevitable.

In recent days Dominique de Villepin has also stood out as one of the few voices outside the left to attack the mayor of Le Havre head-on over immigration. After Édouard Philippe described the over-representation of young people from immigrant backgrounds in the looting of 17 October as obvious, the former foreign minister denounced a political shift, according to AFP. He wrote that seeing what one sees now means accepting that democracy has become captive to screens, turning around the Charles Péguy line quoted by his rival.

What next

The question is when the former occupant of Matignon, the prime minister's office, will take the plunge. He is betting on a space he believes is open, saying that between those who are falling and those who have not yet started to rise in the polls, one can imagine there is some room. The first round of the presidential election takes place in less than six months.