Described as a Gallic Thatcher, the French presidential hopeful is neoliberal and has not ruled out working with Assad

For many of his 35 years in politics, François Fillon has hovered around the highest corridors of French power, often overshadowed by a brighter, more determined star, and never quite considered capable of clinching the ultimate job as president.

Hard-working, socially conservative and loyal, he seemed a man destined to stay in a secondary role. An Anglophile tea-drinker who likes racing cars, he has a suspicious affinity for the Anglo-Saxon free-market economic model. He even admitted to admiring Margaret Thatcher – never a quick ticket to electoral success in France.

Eclipsed most notably by Nicolas Sarkozy, who appointed him as prime minister in 2007 and then spent the next five years treating him as an underling, he entered Les Républicains primary race as the third man to frontrunners Alain Juppé and Sarkozy. That is where the polls suggested he would stay.

Just a week ago, it seemed Fillon’s campaign would crash and burn when faced with the relentless ambition of his former boss. But on Sunday night, the 62-year-old emerged, thrust suddenly into the spotlight, to grab a celebratory demi of beer with which to toast his first place and an extraordinary 44% of the vote.

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It was one of the most surprising political reversals in France since the Front National founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, scraped into the second round of the presidential elections in 2002.

Even at his most confident, Fillon couldn’t have imagined doing so well in the first-round primary, leaving Juppé trailing with 28%. The rival camps were equally astounded. Having consigned Fillon to the role of “also-ran”, they had not wasted much energy attacking him or his policies.

Politically, Fillon has been described as a Gallic Thatcher, a conservative with a capital “C” and Catholic with a small “c”. He has spoken against France’s statist tradition as an outspoken fan of neoliberal economic policies who is big on “authority”.

“I’m tagged with the liberal label in the same way they would paint crosses on lepers’ doors in the middle ages, but I’m just a pragmatist,” he said recently. He opposed same sex marriage and adoption laws, but has said he will not repeal them. He has described French colonialism as a form of cultural exchange.

He will set alarm bells ringing in Westminster with his calls for a rapprochement with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Syria. Asked early in the campaign whether France should cooperate with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to fight Islamic State, he said France should unite with all possible forces, “democratic or not”.

The son of a provincial solicitor and an English teacher from Sarthe in west France, Fillon had a strict, Catholic upbringing and reportedly wanted to be a journalist travelling the world. Instead, he studied law and became a parliamentary assistant to his local MP. He was elected to the national assembly in 1981 aged just 27.

The year before, he had wed, far from his terroir, in the 17th-century church of St Bartholomew in the village of Llanover, near Abergavenny. His wife, now potentially France’s future first lady - a title that does not officially exist - is Welsh-born Penelope Kathryn Clarke.

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The couple met when Penny, as she is known to friends, spent her final year of a French and German degree as a teaching assistant at a school in Le Mans. She returned to study law at Bristol University and when she qualified the pair got married.

The Fillons have five children and live in a 12th century chateau near where he grew up in Sarthe. A lesser known fact is that Penny’s younger sister Jane is married to Fillon’s younger brother Philippe.

“My father was very pleased I married a Frenchman, then when my sister did the same he banned our other two sisters from French men,” she said in a 2007 interview the day after her husband was named prime minister.



The couple are fiercely protective of their family’s privacy, and Penny Fillon admits she prefers country life with her horses and children to partying and politicking in Paris. Ultra-discreet, she is described as “the anti-Carla Bruni”, the opposite of Sarkozy’s supermodel-turned-singer wife.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fillon with his Welsh wife, Penelope Clarke. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

In the same 2007 interview, she said: “People ask what my new role is, but there isn’t one. Once this week is over everything will die down and I will be able to carry on as before … I don’t get recognised in the street and I hope not to. That would horrify me.



“In fact, because my husband gets recognised, I often walk on the other side of the road, which I suppose isn’t very nice of me.”



In a recent interview, Fillon’s eldest daughter Marie described how her father loved messing about at home repairing electrical and computer equipment. She recounted how her youngest brother’s nursery school teacher once asked what his father - then prime minister - did for a living. The boy replied: “He repairs computers.”

He also likes racing cars at Le Mans, and once appeared on the French equivalent of Top Gear to bemoan, among other things, the dismal state of French car design.

Penny Fillon has said her husband is determined but “unlike most politicians, does not have the killer instinct. He has kept a sort of decency about him, which is a good thing as a human being but perhaps not so good ambition-wise.”



If he has not developed a killer instinct since, he will have to do so fast. Having massacred Sarkozy’s presidential ambitions, he must now finish off Juppé’s career to finally escape from the shadows.