| Newly appointed Home Affairs minister Bruno Retailleau has outshone his colleagues with tough immigration talk that mimics arguments from the far right, vowing to take the fight to Brussels, with Michel Barnier's tacit approval. Some thought that putting together a government, some 70-something days after the snap elections results laid bare a French parliamentary scene more fractured than ever would end the political crisis. Others predicted it was only the beginning. The latter were right. In the nine days since Barnier introduced his 38-minister-strong government, one issue has made it to the heart of political conversations with far-right undertones that are hard to ignore: immigration. The man at the centre of this media storm is new Home Affairs Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has been maximising his airtime to push through an immigration narrative that, in many ways, echoes that of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). “Just like millions of French people, I think immigration is not good luck,” he said in a one-hour-long interview on Sunday evening, expressing regrets that the French constitution doesn’t allow for a referendum on immigration – which he would be very keen to organise. He even took aim at the core principle of the rule of law, which enshrines the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial branches of power, arguing that they are “neither intangible nor sacred.” “The source of the rule of law is democracy and the sovereign people,” he told far-right weekly Le Journal du Dimanche. | 
