The scandal-hit French presidential candidate François Fillon is under growing pressure to step down as dozens of MPs and senators quit his campaign, warning that he is leading the French right into certain electoral disaster.



Thierry Solère, an MP and Fillon’s one-time loyal chief campaign spokesman, on Friday became the latest of at least 100 elected politicians to walk out, fleeing what concerned party supporters are calling “Fillon’s sinking ship”.

The rightwing former minister Nadine Morano said Fillon must step down as candidate, warning he was in a “dead end”, his electoral chances slipping away, and he risked bringing “catastrophe” to the right.

Fillon revealed this week that he was to be charged over allegations that he paid his British wife hundreds of thousands of euros from taxpayers’ funds for a suspected fake job as his parliamentary assistant. He is also alleged to have given his children extremely highly paid fake jobs when they were students.

Fillon has denied wrongdoing and insisted at a rally on Thursday night that he would continue as candidate, saying: “The French people back me.” On Saturday, he is expected to unveil his manifesto programme. Then, on Sunday, he has called for a open-air rally of supporters to gather in Paris as a show of strength.

What is 'Penelopegate'? The scandal is centred on allegations that French presidential candidate François Fillon paid his British wife, Penelope, at least €680,000 (£577,000) of taxpayers’ money for a suspected fake parliamentary assistant job spanning 15 years. He is also being investigated over giving his children highly paid, allegedly fake jobs from state funds when they were still students. Although French politicians are allowed to employ family members, it is unclear what work Penelope did. Fillon, who once styled himself a sleaze-free 'Mr Clean' and denies that he or any of his family members ever broke the law, has been summoned to appear before judges on 15 March.

The candidate has dropped in the polls and now faces being knocked out of the vote before the final round by the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen.

About 70% of French voters think Fillon is wrong to stay in the race when he is likely to face charges, an Odoxa poll found on Friday.

Fillon, a one-time presidential favourite who had styled himself as a sleaze-free Mr Clean, had promised he would step down if charges were pressed against him, but he has gone back on his word.

Instead he has turned on judges and the justice system and attacked the workings of the French state this week with increasingly inflammatory language, calling for his supporters to rise up and “resist”.

Many in his mainstream rightwing party saw this as a populist-style turn in his campaign and his rhetoric was likened to that of Donald Trump or Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Wanted: strong centrist European leaders with star quality Read more

Dominique de Villepin, a former rightwing prime minister, said Fillon was driving the French right “into the abyss” with his insistence on running for the presidency. “Going down this dead-end street is taking the state, our faith in democracy and its fellow travellers hostage,” he wrote in Le Figaro newspaper.

But Fillon, asked on Thursday what he would do if all elected politicians quit his campaign, he said he would carry on without them.

There are two weeks until the final candidates list will be closed for the two-round presidential election in April and May. If Fillon does step down, his bitterly divided Republican party would have little time to agree on a possible replacement whom all sides endorse. Fillon was chosen as candidate in a primary race last November and cannot be unseated. He would have to resign himself.

Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux and a former prime minister, is ready to step in if Fillon pulls out, a member of his entourage told AFP on Friday. But Juppé’s camp insists “all the conditions” would have to be met. “François Fillon has to take the decision to pull out himself and the rightwing and centre camps … have to be united behind him,” his entourage said.

Until now, the former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was knocked out in the first round of the primary race but still wields considerable influence in the party, had backed Fillon and reportedly opposed a Juppé candidacy.