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 France’s conservative Les Républicains party has selected as its new leader Eric Ciotti, a lawmaker known for taking a hard line on immigration and crime, as it seeks to reverse a decade of bruising election losses that have left it a much diminished political force. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
 https://www.ft.com/content/dc12dadc-24db-420d-86c8-d08852407fcc

 The choice of the 57-year-old veteran MP, who represents the Alpes-Maritimes region that includes Nice, is a sign of the rightward tilt of the party as it fights for its survival squeezed between Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance and Marine Le Pen’s ascendant far-right Rassemblement National. Some 62,000 members of Les Républicains (LR) took part in the two-round online vote that ended on Sunday after a six-week campaign. Ciotti saw off challenges from senator Bruno Retailleau, a cultural conservative from Vendée who was seen as a less divisive figure internally, and Aurélien Pradié, a charismatic 36-year old MP from the south-west. In the second round, Ciotti got 53.7 per cent of the vote compared with 46.3 per cent for Retailleau, according to an announcement by Annie Genevard, the interim party head. “The vote shows the dynamism of our movement,” she said. Ciotti’s win comes as parties lay groundwork for the 2027 presidential election in which Macron cannot run again because of term limits. For LR, the heirs to the conservative parties that produced most of France’s postwar presidents, the stakes could not be higher. They have been out of power since Nicolas Sarkozy left presidential office in 2012 and have almost disappeared from local office in Paris and other cities. Their candidate Valérie Pécresse flopped in April’s presidential poll when Macron was re-elected, and LR lost nearly half their seats in the National Assembly in June. But since Macron’s alliance lost its parliamentary majority at the same time, the 62 MPs of the LR group have become a key swing voting bloc that the government needs to woo if it is to advance its legislative priorities such as raising the retirement age or building more renewable energy.