Editing Jacques Chirac (section)

=== Struggle for the right-wing leadership: 1976–1986 ===
[[File:EEG-top in Den Haag vergadering ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken vergadering, Bestanddeelnr 933-6981 (cropped).jpg|thumb|Jacques Chirac with president [[François Mitterrand]] (1986)]]
In 1978, Chirac attacked Giscard's [[pro-European]] policy and made a nationalist turn with the December 1978 [[Call of Cochin]], initiated by his counsellors [[Marie-France Garaud]] and {{ill|Pierre Juillet|fr}}, which had first been called by Pompidou. Hospitalised in {{lang|fr|[[Hôpital Cochin]]|italic=no}} after a car crash, he declared that "as always about the drooping of France, the pro-foreign party acts with its peaceable and reassuring voice". He appointed [[Yvan Blot]], an intellectual who would later join the [[National Front (France)|National Front]], as director of his campaigns for the [[1979 European Parliament election in France|1979 European election]].<ref name="Slama">[[:fr:Alain-Gérard Slama|Alain-Gérard Slama]], "Vous avez dit bonapartiste ?" in ''L'Histoire'' n°313, October 2006, pp. 60–63 {{in lang|fr}}</ref>

After the poor results of the election, Chirac broke with Garaud and Juillet. Vexed Marie-France Garaud stated: "We thought Chirac was made of the same marble of which statues are carved in, we perceive he's of the same [[faience]] [[bidet]]s are made of."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://archives-lepost.huffingtonpost.fr/article/2008/05/03/1188869_la-cruella-de-la-droite-revient-pour-tacler-sarkozy.html |title=La "Cruella" de la droite revient... Marie-France Garaud taclera-t-elle Sarkozy? |work=Le Post |access-date=14 December 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140822110854/http://archives-lepost.huffingtonpost.fr/article/2008/05/03/1188869_la-cruella-de-la-droite-revient-pour-tacler-sarkozy.html |archive-date=22 August 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref> His rivalry with Giscard d'Estaing intensified.

Chirac made his first run for president against Giscard d'Estaing in the [[1981 French presidential election|1981 election]], thus splitting the centre-right vote.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Chirac, ex-ally, challenges Giscard |work=The New York Times |url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1981/02/11/260206.html |access-date=2022-05-14 |language=en}}</ref> He was eliminated in the first round with 18% of the vote. He reluctantly supported Giscard in the second round. He refused to give instructions to the RPR voters but said that he supported the incumbent president "in a private capacity", which was interpreted as almost ''de facto'' support of the [[French Socialist Party|Socialist Party]]'s (PS) candidate, [[François Mitterrand]], who was elected by a broad majority.<ref>{{Cite news|title=Mitterrand beats Giscard; Socialist victory reverses trend of 23 years in France |url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1981/05/11/117115.html |access-date=2022-05-14 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |page=A1 |language=en |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Giscard has always blamed Chirac for his defeat. He was told by Mitterrand, before his death, that the latter had dined with Chirac before the election. Chirac told the Socialist candidate that he wanted to "get rid of Giscard". In his memoirs, Giscard wrote that between the two rounds, he phoned the RPR headquarters. He passed himself off, as a right-wing voter, by changing his voice. The RPR employee advised him "certainly do not vote Giscard!" After 1981, the relationship between the two men became tense, with Giscard, even though he had been in the same government coalition as Chirac, criticising Chirac's actions openly.{{citation needed|date=September 2019}}

After the May 1981 presidential election, the right also lost the subsequent [[1981 French legislative election|legislative election]] that year. However, as Giscard had been knocked out, Chirac appeared as the principal leader of the right-wing opposition. Due to his attacks against the economic policy of the Socialist government, he gradually aligned himself with the prevailing [[Economic liberalism|economically liberal]] opinion, even though it did not correspond with Gaullist doctrine. While the far-right National Front grew, taking advantage of the [[proportional representation]] electoral system which had been introduced for the [[1986 French legislative election|1986 legislative elections]], he signed an electoral pact with the Giscardian (and more or less Christian Democratic) party [[Union for French Democracy]] (UDF).{{citation needed|date=September 2019}}