French conservative leader deposed by party for backing Marine Le Pen

The leader of France’s mainstream conservatives was booted out of the party after enraging colleagues with his call for an electoral pact with the far-right party of Marine Le Pen.

Eric Ciotti was stripped of his membership of the centre-right Les Républicains by the party’s executive committee on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, the power struggle gripping LR took a farcical turn when Ciotti shuttered party headquarters in what his opponents said was an attempt to thwart his removal.

Ciotti said he had locked the Paris building for security reasons following “threats received and disorder” on Tuesday.

The party executive was due to hold an emergency meeting there on Wednesday afternoon. Many of its senior members were baying for Ciotti’s dismissal after he called for an electoral alliance with the Rassemblement National, the party led by Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, ahead of snap elections on June 30. They met in a nearby building instead and voted unanimously to exclude him from the party.

Ciotti responded defiantly to the executive committee’s vote to remove him. “I am and I remain the chair,” he said on X.

LR politicians rounded on Ciotti for making the party a laughing stock. “If we have to remove him physically, we will not hesitate to do so,” said Geoffroy Didier, the party’s deputy general secretary.

Aurélien Pradié, an LR MP, told reporters outside the venue: “There are French people who work like dogs, who every day hope to believe in democracy and they see this mad spectacle.”

Vincent Jeanbrun, who resigned on Wednesday morning as party spokesman, said Ciotti was using “dictatorial methods”.

Ciotti enraged senior LR figures when he unilaterally called for a deal with the RN, with many calling for him to be removed as leader forthwith. Some described him as a “traitor” and “collaborator”.

The turmoil in the centre-right party, which embodies the Gaullist tradition in French politics, was triggered by President Emmanuel Macron’s shock dissolution of parliament on Sunday, but the LR has been divided for years over whether to work more closely with Le Pen’s party.

The LR were “turning their back on the heritage of [ex-presidents] de Gaulle, Chirac and Sarkozy”, Macron said on Wednesday.

Ciotti said he had received thousands of messages of support from party members but it was unclear how many of LR’s 57 MPs were willing to follow his lead.

One opinion poll this week suggested that Le Pen’s RN party could win between 235 and 265 seats to become the biggest party in the National Assembly. A pact with LR MPs could take the far right to the brink of a majority.