09 March 2017
Is He French Toast?
Why Fillon may yet win.
By Richard Pooley
“Lorsqu’un politicien n’est pas cru, il est cuit.” So wrote François Kersaudy, French historian, professor of English at the University of Paris and author of a book on Churchill and De Gaulle. The good professor would probably translate his comment, written in his column in Le Point on 4 March, as “Whenever a politician is no longer believed, he is toast.” He was referring to François Fillon and the extraordinary week of political theatre we have just been through in France. Another François, centrist ex-presidential candidate Bayrou, described it as “vaudeville”. Others called it a fiasco, a farce and collective political suicide.
I was beginning to write an article for Shaw Sheet just after 08.00 last Wednesday when an alert flashed up on my phone: Fillon had put off his visit later that morning to the International Agricultural Show in Paris. Attendance at this annual event, the sometimes awkward meeting of sophisticated Parisians with their rural countrymen and women (and their animals and tractors), is de rigueur for every candidate in a French presidential election. The show attracts around three-quarters of a million people. To postpone such an important visit at such short notice could only mean one thing: Fillon was surely about to announce his withdrawal from the race. The media could talk of little else for the rest of that day and, indeed, for the next five days. It seemed best to postpone writing my article until the media storm had cleared.
Shaw Sheet’s digest of the week’s events outside the UK will no doubt remind you of what happened. I will focus on the chaos of Wednesday morning and Fillon’s combative speech to his hard-core supporters in Paris on Sunday afternoon. The first tells us why he will probably fail to become president, the second why he might possibly win.
By 09.00 last Wednesday it had become clear that Fillon had told nobody in his campaign team why he had suddenly changed his schedule. He said he would issue a statement at 11.00, then that he would hold a press conference at 12.00. A senior member of his Republican party said in a radio interview before 9.00 that Fillon should resign for “moral reasons”. Rumours filled the airwaves and social media: he was about to resign and name Alain Juppé, the person he defeated to become the party’s candidate, as his successor; Juppé would be at the press conference but not ex-president, Nicolas Sarkozy. At 11.58 Juppé’s spokeperson tweeted that his boss was not attending the conference, had never said he would attend and had not been invited to attend. At 12.25 Fillon finally started to speak to reporters. He announced that he was going in front of a judge on 15 March to face charges that his wife and two children had been paid around a million euros for jobs which they had not done. But he would not be quitting the race, even though he had promised to do so should he be put under formal investigation. He was the victim of a politically-biased judiciary, he declared. It was “political assassination” and “lynching” by the media. He would carry on for the sake of the millions of people on the Right who needed a voice. An instant opinion poll conducted that evening revealed that only a quarter of French voters and barely half of his own supporters thought he was right to carry on. Key members of his inner circle resigned within hours of the press conference and the haemorrhage of support went on until Sunday.
What struck me as astonishing about Wednesday’s events was the utterly inept way Fillon handled them and himself. From the beginning of his campaign he has sold himself as a safe pair of hands who has the expertise, experience and moral authority to bring about the changes to France’s economy and society which it so clearly needs. When he unexpectedly but overwhelmingly won the Republican Party primary in late November, he had been given a clear mandate by millions of French people. As Alain Juppé said this Monday, in a wise and wistful speech declining to be the saviour of a Republican Party in revolt, Fillon had had a boulevard in front of him but had now reached a dead end. Why, I asked myself and French friends, had Fillon not planned exactly how he and his advisers would respond when the inevitable call came for him to argue his case in front of a judge? Why did he not have a press release ready? Why all the confusion about when and how he would make his announcement? Why could he not at the very least have started his press conference on time (Alain Juppé started his three minutes early)? The impression given was of someone who had lost all control, hardly someone any voter would feel confident could run the country.
By Sunday, all the media were saying that even if Fillon attracted 200,000 people to his rally at the Trocadero Plaza in Paris, he would be unable to save his candidacy. Fillon’s campaign manager had resigned but agreed to organise this event, probably in the hope that Fillon would use it to announce he was handing over the baton to Juppé. But Fillon reaffirmed his intention to fight on to the tens of thousands standing in the cold, driving rain. By his side was his wife, Penelope, who had insisted in that morning’s Journal de Dimanche, her first media interview since the ‘fake jobs’ scandal broke, that she and her family were innocent. Also there, just behind his left shoulder, was 52-year old François Baroin, Mayor of Troyes and Economy Minister for the last year of Sarkozy’s government. Readers may recall the Stop Press at the end of my article of 16 February, Sans Lui, Le Deluge.
It’s well known that Sarkozy and Fillon loathe each other. Yet within 24 hours of that speech in Paris, Fillon had appointed five Sarkozistes to replace those in his campaign team he had lost, headed by a certain Monsieur Baroin. Fillon’s media people (he still has some) spun the number of people at the Trocadero to 300,000, reduced later to 200,000. The revised figure is still on his website even though the Plaza is reckoned to be able to hold no more than 35,000 people, without umbrellas. Trump would approve. On Monday evening, the Republican Party’s leaders came together and said that the party was once more behind Fillon. An average of the most recent opinion polls put him at 19%, well behind Emmanuel Macron (25%) and Marine Le Pen (26%).
So, is it all over bar the fight between Macron and Le Pen in the second round on 7 May? Is Fillon bound to come third or worse? I wouldn’t bet on it. What this fiasco has shown is that Fillon can rely on around one in five French voters to support him come what may. Just like Le Pen, he has a secure base of votes on which to build. Unlike Macron, whose support, though enthusiastic, is soft. Indeed, as I write this on Wednesday afternoon, a new opinion poll shows a rise in support for Fillon (to 21%). Moreover, he has now got the relatively youthful and charismatic Baroin campaigning for him. Who better to counter the 39-year old ex-Economy Minister of the Socialist Government of the despised François Hollande than the ex-Economy Minister of its right-wing predecessor? I would expect Baroin to become much more visible and audible. And if Fillon were to win, I wonder who he would choose as his prime minister?
Which leaves me with only one remaining question: what hope does Macron have of winning when his first name is not François?
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