00:00That's just it Delano, we don't really know who's in charge.
00:03What I can tell you is that Éric Struti walked out of the building just behind me,
00:06the white building, that's the Republican Party's HQ,
00:10walked across the road to the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament,
00:13about half an hour ago, obviously surrounded by a swarm of reporters,
00:17I was among them. He didn't say an awful lot.
00:19All we know is that he's clearly sticking to his line.
00:22He says that he's still leader of the party and he's just put on X,
00:26a video of himself walking into his office in the National Assembly
00:30with the words, working at work for France.
00:33So that's what he's saying.
00:35On the other side though, we have a source from the heavyweights,
00:38the senior officials and members of parliament inside the Republican Party saying,
00:44the end is near, they're about to have a meeting on video conference,
00:48where they will finalise everything that needs to be finalised
00:51in order to expel Éric Struti once and for all from the party.
00:55It sounds like a French version of House of Cards, if you will, Claire.
00:59I'm curious, what do Republican lawmakers who don't want this pact with the far right,
01:05as Éric Struti suggested, what do they want for the upcoming polls?
01:11Who are they going to seek an alliance with,
01:13given how dismally they did this past Sunday?
01:20What we understand for now is that the Republican Party members
01:23who do not want this alliance with Éric Struti and therefore the far right,
01:27they will continue putting up their candidates in different constituencies across France,
01:32making it clear that they are part of the Republican Party.
01:35But what we could find is a situation where we have constituencies
01:38where there's a candidate for the Republican Party,
01:41but then we also have a candidate who's also kind of for the Republican Party,
01:44we're not really sure, but they are aligned to Éric Struti.
01:46So for instance, in Éric Struti's own constituency in the south of France,
01:51he will be running, though with this alliance with the far right,
01:54but they will also be, and we heard this from Olivier Marley,
01:57who's one of the heavyweights in the Republican Party,
01:59the Republican Party says they will also be running a candidate in that constituency too.
02:04So at the end of the day, it looks like it might actually be up to the voters to decide,
02:09members of the parliament, people who want to vote right wing in this upcoming snap election.
02:14It'll be up to them to decide, are they going to stick with the right wing traditional party,
02:18which does not want to align itself with the far right,
02:20or are they going to join Éric Struti's camp?
02:23While you were speaking, we just got an urgent from the AFP news agency,
02:28who's saying Éric Struti will in fact be having lunch with Jordan Bardella,
02:32that's of course of Marine Le Pen's party, so things clearly will get interesting.
02:37Claire, thank you very much for that.
02:39We did, he was asked that, he was asked that as he was leaving the building,
02:43are you going to have lunch with Jordan Bardella?
02:45And he wasn't ruling it out.
02:46So we had a feeling that's where he was going to be having his lunch today.
02:49We had a feeling, so I'm not too surprised to hear that confirmation.
02:52That's what we thought was going to happen.
