“The president has gone a lot to the right”

Aurélien Rousseauwho was Macron’s Minister of Health until last December, confirmed this Thursday that he will be a candidate for deputy for the left-wing alliance of the New Popular Front and has justified it under the argument that the French president has “turned right”, and “a lot”, some of his policies, especially those that have to do with immigration.

There was a moment of change in the president’s political axis and I do not share that,” Rousseau explained in an interview in FranceInfo, who aspires to a seat in the legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.

Aurélien Rousseau was appointed Minister of Health in July 2023, a position he left just a few months later, in December, after the approval in the National Assembly of the controversial Immigration Law, supported by the extreme right of Marine Le Pen.

“The Immigration Law went too far into Le Pen’s territory“, he criticized, adding that Macron’s Government has oriented itself “far right”giving as an example the incorporation of ministers, such as that of Culture Rachida Dati, from the French conservative right.

Rousseau, who was also the prime minister’s chief of staff Elisabeth Borne between 2022 and 2023, he has admitted that “it is not easy to leave the Government”, but considered it a step consistent with the “political disagreement” that he noted with the Executive’s tendency towards the right.

“I have always been left-wing”

Regarding his candidacy with the left-wing New Popular Front, in the Yvelines department – on the western outskirts of Paris -, he has justified it as part of the candidates of the Socialist Party and that “I have always been left-wing.”

In his justification that Macron has gone to the right, he has cited the words that the president said this Tuesday about the New Popular Front being “immigrationist.”

“These are words that could have come from the extreme right,” considered Rousseau, who defines that expression as “outside the usual register” of Macron.

“You don’t have to be on the extreme left to think that someone who works without papers is regularized in this time of labor shortage in some sectors,” he explained in reference to the left alliance’s position on this issue.