Edouard Philippe (center) at the first interregional congress of his Horizons party in Bordeaux, France, January 26, 2025. PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP
On Tuesday, October 7, the day after the fall of the first government of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, Edouard Philippe made a rare morning radio appearance. The journalists were struck by how restless he seemed. The first of President Emmanuel Macron's seven prime ministers repeatedly stumbled over his words, nervously fiddled with the microphone. Six minutes into the interview, he finally took the plunge. Macron "would honor himself" by organizing "an early presidential election, meaning he would leave immediately after the budget is adopted," Philippe said. It took the 55-year-old several attempts to spell out his declaration, at the risk of doing so confusedly: He was calling on the president to hasten his departure but "not calling for his resignation."
Although the break between Macron and Philippe had been official since the latter was forced out of the prime minister's office on July 3, 2020, it had now burst into the open. Philippe, who had declared his bid a year earlier and had seen his poll numbers erode over several months, needed to distance himself from the weakened and unpopular Macron. A few days later, he drove the point home, perhaps a bit too forcefully. "I owe him nothing," the presidential candidate said in a television interview. "He came looking for me."
