“Why would the National Rally scare us? »

The deputy, the mayor and the gendarme stand in a field of corn, at the foot of a crane which stands in Châtillon-Coligny, in the vicinity of Montargis, sub-prefecture of Loiret. “There is something for everyone”encourages the site manager.

So Thomas Ménagé, elected from the National Rally (RN) in the 4^e constituency of the department, grabs the trowel to spread the cement. His name is not mentioned among the authorities when dedicating the first breeze block of the future gendarmerie barracks. Whatever, he claims his place and brings his stone, like other RN deputies elected on June 19, to Marine Le Pen’s standardization work.

Of the six seats for deputies from Loiret, two were won by the new generation of the far right: Thomas Ménagé, 30, in Montargis (63.4%), and Mathilde Paris, 37, former member of the Mouvement pour the France of Philippe de Villiers, former head of a design company, in the 3^e constituency, that of Gien (52.2%). A first on lands which, for twenty years, have always voted for the right.

The inhabitants remember from the first that he beat Jean-Michel Blanquer, the former Minister of National Education sprayed with whipped cream by two angry teachers, then returned to Paris without qualifying in the second round. The second ousted the outgoing Les Républicains (LR) Claude de Ganay in the first round and sends back to ancient history the radical-socialist parenthesis opened in the south of this Gaullist department, in the name of a rurality to embody against elected officials ” Aboveground “.

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Both are a reflection of the evolution of the nationalist party and its electorate, established in peri-urban areas and sensitive to the hopes of the “yellow vests”. Here, neither quite the city nor totally the countryside, unemployment is close to the national average and the owners of a principal residence are more numerous than on average in France.

Anger against “the lazy”, “the assisted”

In the heart of Châtillon-Coligny, at the beginning of July, a gentleman in a hat and white beard walks his Coton de Tuléar named Blum slowly. Tribute to Leon. Robert Le Moing, 80, former butcher (“as a worker, not as a boss, otherwise I wouldn’t be here”), hates changing his habits. He has always voted for the right, but now chooses the RN so that the pension improves, even if he judges his monthly pension of 1,200 euros “correct”. “Strangers don’t bother me as long as they don’t bother me. I did not like Jean-Marie Le Pen”he specifies, judging the party which advocates national preference no more “xenophobic” than another.

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