The departure of two Renaissance deputies for Édouard Philippe’s party provokes the anger of Macronist executives, who threaten to cut ties with their allies.

“They’re going to see what it’s like to arrive in a group that only gets back crumbs,” says a Renaissance executive to Le Figaro. Thursday morning, two deputies from the Macronist group announced that they were joining the ranks of Horizons, an allied party founded by Édouard Philippe. News that made the boss of the Renaissance deputies, Sylvain Maillard, jump. He immediately summoned the two parties to show them “all the advantages” that they were losing in the operation. Before turning his wrath towards the Philippist leadership.

Bertrand Bouyx and Pierre Henriet, the two defectors, put forward “essentially local reasons” for their departure: the first, a deputy from Calvados, has geographical proximity to the mayor of Le Havre, founder of Horizons. The second, deputy for Vendée, follows the dynamic started by the president of the Pays de la Loire region, Christelle Morançais, who herself announced her support for Édouard Philippe last Sunday.

But on the Renaissance side, they accuse unfair poaching on the part of the allied party. “We had a non-aggression agreement,” laments those around Sylvain Maillard. The latter immediately contacted the boss of the Horizons deputies, Laurent Marcangeli, to tell him what he thought of the situation. “I have never done politics like that,” he wrote to his counterpart, adding that “it would be a shame for all of us if our solidarity were tainted.”

At the same time, Maillard convinced Renaissance’s office to “cut ties with Horizons” as long as the two MPs had “not resigned from all the positions they obtained thanks to the group”, according to Politico. “If we have to show them that we are the biggest group, we will do it,” asserts a close friend of the Macronist deputy from Paris.

In the meantime, Bertrand Bouyx and Pierre Henriet will have to “give back their pretty offices” to recover “small ones in the prefabs allocated to the Philippists”, mocks a particularly bitter Macronist executive. Another threatens to sabotage Horizons’ parliamentary niche, scheduled for March 14: “We’ll see if they manage to get their bills passed with just their deputies,” he grumbles to Politico.

At Horizons, we assure that “no canvassing” was made to the two new recruits, who would have come on their own. “Laurent Marcangeli will try to calm things down, but there are tones that he does not accept that we use when we address him,” reacts a close friend of the president of the group.

Far from being impressed, the Philippist deputies feel the wind turning, while the mayor of Le Havre is cited among the favorites in the next presidential election: “If some thought that we were going to remain the nice little group and that the game is frozen , says one of them to Le Figaro, they are wrong.”