Gérald Darmanin, the justice minister, said on Monday that he will not run for president in 2027 and will back Édouard Philippe. He said it in an interview with La Voix du Nord, ending a candidacy that had been assumed for months without ever being declared.
His reason was arithmetic dressed as duty. "We are in an extremely difficult situation, socially difficult for the French," he said. "So I have decided not to add to the division." He wants everyone else to do the same: the national interest, he said, is not served by multiplying candidacies.
He also put it in personal terms. Philippe is the man who made him a minister, he said, and the best placed of them.
Philippe has been a declared candidate since 2024 and leads the polling inside the centre bloc, ahead of Gabriel Attal. The two have talked about consolidating behind whichever of them is stronger at the start of 2027. That understanding now has a third signature on it — although last week François Bayrou called instead for a primary of "all reformist democrats," which is the opposite instrument.
Darmanin holds his own political rentrée in Tourcoing on 30 August. The party he founded, Populaires, has been dormant since he stayed in government in autumn 2025.
Why it is on the board
It was the most-read story on BFMTV in France. What moved was not the withdrawal but the instruction attached to it — a minister telling his own side to stop running, eight months out.
확인: BFMTV · La Voix du Nord