By the crepe stand and flower-stalls on the edge of Angers market in western France, Benoît Triot, a manager at a furniture firm, stood handing out manifesto leaflets for the rightwing presidential candidate François Fillon. “Voters are coming back to him,” he argued. “People want the French right in power again and many are starting to doubt whether what they hear about alleged scandals is true.”

Triot felt optimistic – in three hours handing out leaflets bearing Fillon’s face only one person had shouted “Lock him up in prison!”

When Fillon and his British-born wife were last month formally placed under judicial investigation for embezzling state funds by setting up allegedly fake parliamentary assistant jobs, many – including some inside his party, Les Républicains – assumed Fillon’s campaign for the presidency was mortally wounded. Fillon had once been the presidential favourite, but he slipped behind the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen, and now even the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon has begun to close in on him. Some party activists, in Paris for example, had even shied off leafleting in the street after the corruption allegations, complaining that canvassing for Fillon had become excruciating – with passers-by heckling and shouting “Crook!”.

If Fillon wins or loses, after the presidential election there will be a real in-depth debate on the right on France Christophe Billan, Sens Commun

But the core of Fillon’s rightwing support base has held firm and his poll ratings have begun to inch up again, giving his supporters hope that he could still have an outside chance in this highly unpredictable French presidential race.

Fillon’s team are staking everything on his policy programme of austerity for an indebted France – emphasising his manifesto rather than his personality after his reputation took a blow. “I’m not asking you to love me,” Fillon implored at a Paris rally this weekend. “I’m asking you to support me because it is in France’s interest.”

In western France, where Fillon’s social conservatism and Catholic family values have ensured him a devoted base, canvassers have been out on the ground in force trying to harness the vote. Many rightwing voters here believed Fillon when he claimed that the corruption investigation was a plot by the left to keep the right out of power. “If you want a dog killed, you claim it has rabies,” said Éliane, a retired social worker, bitterly.

Others are grudingly returning to the fold. “After he was charged with misusing state funds, I wanted him to quit the campaign,” said Hélène, a 70-year-old retired shop worker and a lifelong rightwing voter. “But he’s still here and he’s the only one who can reform France. This country has to tighten its belt and he has a plan for that. So I’ll vote for him. But I do think it will be hard for him to govern if, once he’s in power, people take to the streets against him accusing him of money-grubbing.”

Emmanuel Macron, the centrist candidate who is now leading in the presidential polls. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

Triot and half the team of Fillon canvassers at Angers market were members of Sens Commun (Common Sense), a new socially conservative movement for family values inside Fillon’s party, Les Républicains, which was born out of the massive street protests against François Hollande’s legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013.

Sens Commun prides itself on its ability to mobilise. The 2013 street demonstrations were historic: more than 100,000 people took part – the largest gatherings of conservative and rightwing protesters in France for 30 years. The demonstrators, many of whom marched with their children, were protesting against the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples, and above all adoption and parenting rights for same-sex married couples. Fillon has promised to reverse some of those adoption rights if he wins power.

Sens Commun has been at the forefront of mobilising to keep Fillon afloat – it helped bring together big crowds at an outdoor Paris rally last month that allowed him to stay in the race. But the more Sens Commun takes part in Fillon’s campaign, the more it has become the focus of controversy and rows. The centre-right candidate Alain Juppé, who lost to Fillon in the primary vote to become presidential candidate, took aim at Sens Commun when he recently warned: “The core of activists and sympathisers of Les Républicains have radicalised.” This month, the independent centrist Macron scathingly told a rally in Marseille that Fillon’s clan had “turned their back on the Republic to embrace Sens Commun. Shame on them!” The movement slammed Macron’s “crude bid to paint us as bogeymen”.

Sens Commun has since broadened its focus from family issues like same-sex parents and euthanasia to issues such as reforming the European Union and overhauling the French economy. “It’s as if a spark has been lit with people,” said Triot of his local meetings. “People really identify with what we’re saying.”



Where the US conservative movement the Tea Party remained outside America’s Republican party, Sens Commun believes it can better influence the public debate as a movement inside Les Républicains. It is small but growing fast, with over 10,000 members of an average age between 30 and 35, and is preparing to run a handful of its own candidates in parliamentary elections in June.

Christophe Billan, a former major in the French foreign legion who is president of Sens Commun and a member of Fillon’s campaign team, recently wrote in Le Figaro: “No, Sens Commun is not a tiny nativist and religious group that threatens the founding principles of the Republic”.

Election campaign posters for Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron in Paris. The first round of the presidential election is on 23 April. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

He told the Guardian that Sens Commun was born from a fear that the French left was trying to “change civilisation” and the founding stones of family and society without a proper debate. Sens Commun has a long-term strategy to play a key role in the rebuilding of the divided and warring French right. More moderate centrists have recently taken a back seat while the right wing of the party steps forward. The fractured party will inevitably have to face its divisions once the presidential election is over.

“Whatever happens, if François Fillon wins or loses, after the presidential election there will be a real in-depth debate on the right on France,” Billan said. “The right will completely reconfigure itself, I’m convinced of that. And Sens Commun will have something to say on that.”

Roch Brancour, a deputy mayor of Angers, and one of the local Les Républicains politicians who have joined Sens Commun, said: “A lot of voters on the right want more focus on what defines French identity, western identity and the family – everything that goes against the unbridled individualism that is so present nowadays. The right is transforming itself. Sens Commun is just symbolic of trends that were already clear among voters and are growing on the right.”

Whether Fillon still has a chance at a surprise breakthrough days before the first-round presidential vote on 23 April remains to be seen.

At Angers market, one 85-year-old canvasser, who was not a member of Sens Commun, had taken part in every rightwing presidential campaign for 30 years. He was optimistic but conceded of Fillon’s campaign: “This is the hardest candidate I’ve ever had.”