“Éric Ciotti has the shoulders and will be able to stay the course in the storm”

Guilhem Carayon is the president of the Young Republicans.

LE FIGARO. – Who did you decide to support and why?

Guilhem CARAYON. – In this period of refoundation, you have to have solid shoulders and know how to stay the course in the storm. Éric Ciotti displays a clear line of uncompromising right and has always been unfailingly loyal to his political family. His experience and his talent are assets that Les Républicains cannot do without. It is for this reason that he has all my confidence to rebuild the right, in loyalty to our natural champion Laurent Wauquiez. We must put ideas back at the heart of our action and it is by renewing our ideological software on a clear and identifiable line that we will once again become audible and attractive.

Éric Ciotti is sometimes accused by some of narrowing the right by focusing his speech on sovereign subjects. Aren’t you afraid that this choice will divide the Young Republicans who are a militant force in full reconstruction?

The strength of Jeunes LR is to have clear convictions. I did not join to do lace or play the tightrope walker. The right must clarify its ideological line and this election must be an opportunity to turn off the warm water tap. You cannot be the strong right and the soft center at the same time.

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The misfortune is that for 20 years, the right has preferred to follow Juppé and Raffarin rather than Pasqua and Séguin. It aligned itself with the moderates to the detriment of the Gaullists. We must have the courage to face up to our mistakes to understand why our voters can no longer identify us as the party of the right.

How to reconnect with this electorate?

We experienced the humiliation of scoring less than 5% in the last presidential election. Without electric shock, we do not deserve to be reborn. We must first make the right diagnosis: the explosion of insecurity, its link with immigration that has become exponential, suffocating taxation, income from assistance almost at the level of that from work, the collapse of our industry caused by unbridled globalization which has considerably impoverished the middle classes. The educational level is collapsing, the public hospital is out of breath. Faced with this general downgrading, it is urgent to organize the French awakening.

Since Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in 2007, the right has stopped thinking and has continued to define itself in relation to the left by adopting a posture of rejection. The time has come to reignite the cultural battle by deconstructing the deconstructors. We must once again become a party that innovates, particularly in the fight against climate change by showing that we can combine growth and ecology. The right must imagine the ecological transition as the great industrial revolution of the 21st century.

Several candidates are on the starting line but we are visibly heading towards a duel between Éric Ciotti and Aurélien Pradié. Do you not fear a division of LR forces?

Everyone is aware of the responsibility incumbent upon us and of the image that we must project. We have too long been entangled in quarrels of chapels which have discredited us. It’s all over. We need to stop putting party before country. The only obsession we must have is France.

As in every internal election, the ideological debate must take place, it is also very healthy. Moreover, this election must also be an opportunity to bring out the new generation in order to show that the right is also capable of renewing itself.