UDI leader Jean-Christophe Lagarde proves French politics is still a family affair

Some establishment French politicians just don’t get it do they?

With the new president, Emmanuel Macron freshly installed in the Elysée palace and his party,  La republique en marche promising a new kind of politics as it aims for a presidential majority in the upcoming French legislative elections, “morality” is pretty much top of the agenda.

So with that in mind, what does a leading figure from one of the country’s other parties do?

Here’s a clue. He (the name will be provided in a moment proves that the time-honoured tradition of political nepotism is alive and kicking and will undoubtedly  be a hard nut to crack (heavy on the clichés here) as it’s so ingrained with the political establishment.

No the talk isn’t of the Le Pen dynasty from the far right Front National - they’re well beyond redemption.

Nor is it of the Fillons, François and Penelope (and children), who successfully contrived to lose the rightwing Les Républicains a spot in the second round of the presidential elections with their seemingly never-ending stories of overpaid and underworked “family employment” (inverted commas because the case is now before the courts).

This time around it involves the leader of the centre-right Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI) Jean-Christophe Lagarde.

Jean-Christophe Lagarde (screenshot BFM TV)

The 49-year-old is running again in June’s parliamentary elections and, as new rules kick in preventing politicians from simultaneously holding office at different levels (one of those other more-than-warped traditions of French political life), Lagarde has quite “magnanimously” offered to step down as mayor of Drancy (a town in the northeastern suburbs of Paris) and hand over power to the sixth in line among his deputies.

Yes, you read correctly, the sixth in line.

An odd choice?

Apparently not, Lagarde assured the popular daily, “Le Parisien”. The recommendation came collectively from his deputies as the “first in line didn’t want to succeed him” and numbers two to five “didn’t have the time”.

So “number six” it is then, Lagarde’s former parliamentary assistant (until 2014) and current regional councillor, Aude…Lagarde…wife of!