Former PM bows out after leading centre-right to rare defeat in first round of presidential election

François Fillon’s disappointing ejection from the presidential race completes a humiliating journey from possible president to yesterday’s man for a candidate fatally tarnished by a string of embezzlement allegations.

Fillon, the choice of the centre-right Les Républicains party, was languishing in third place according to most projections issued immediately after polls closed. Some even forecast that he might lose third spot to the leftist maverick Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The former prime minister’s defeat from the jaws of victory is also a major setback for his party, which is not used to failing to make it into the runoff vote, and observers are predicting a particularly harsh postmortem.

An air of deep dismay had settled on Fillon’s election headquarters, even before the polls closed in the first round of the presidential election.

Afterwards, in brief remarks to supporters, he conceded defeat, accepted sole responsibility for his poor performance and called on the party to regroup before parliamentary elections in June.



“The obstacles in my path were too numerous and too cruel,” he said. “We have to choose what is best for our country. Abstention is not in my genes, above all when an extremist party is close to power. The Front National is well known for its violence, its intolerance, and its programme would lead our country to bankruptcy and Europe into chaos.

“I will vote for Emmanuel Macron.”

Fillon’s basic theme of economic liberalism coupled with social conservatism has widespread support in France. A practising Catholic, he has long promoted traditional “family values” as a foundation for French society, and his message worked well with the country’s broad conservative belt.

But his campaign came unstuck after the French press revealed he had paid his British-born wife, Penelope, hundreds of thousands of euros of public money for parliamentary assistance she allegedly did not provide.

A stream of further allegations followed: that Fillon had set up similar, short-term work for his children; got a billionaire friend to pay Penelope for a non-job on his literary magazine; and accepted gifts of bespoke suits and watches worth tens of thousands of euros.

Reports surfaced that a consultancy set up by Fillon in 2012 had since earned more than €1m from sometimes decidedly dubious sources, and there were claims that a Lebanese billionaire had paid Fillon $50,000 for an introduction to Vladimir Putin.

Both Fillon, 63, and his wife were placed under formal investigation for abuse of public funds last month. He has blamed a plot by leftwing political rivals including the outgoing Socialist president, François Hollande, magistrates and the media.

He has consistently denied any wrongdoing, but has admitted having made some mistakes. “I’m not asking you to love me,” he all but implored at one recent Paris rally. “I’m just asking you to support me, because it is in France’s interests.”

Fillon has raised eyebrows for his support for lifting sanctions imposed on Russia and his personal relationship with Putin. He is also no stranger to putting foot in mouth, most notably on the eve of Sunday’s vote, when he suggested a television interviewer was not up to speed with key issues because she had been away on maternity leave.

Born in the traditionally Catholic Sarthe department west of Paris, Fillon is the son of a history professor mother and solicitor father. With Penelope, whom he met in Le Mans when she was a student on a year abroad, he has raised five children in a 12th-century chateau.



He has abstained on or voted against laws on equality between men and women and same-sex marriage and is personally opposed to abortion, though he would not try to repeal the 1975 law that legalised it in France.

A year after he was first elected as France’s youngest MP, he opposed the 1982 law that in effect legalised homosexuality. A centre-right gay rights group, GayLib, has described his vision of French society as “clearly hostile to LGBT people”.

Fillon has pledged to defend France’s “Christian values”. He would ban medically assisted procreation and use of sperm donors for single women and same-sex couples, and reverse some gay adoption rights.

He has also promised to set annual quotas on immigration, restrict foreigners’ rights to French nationality, set the age of criminal responsibility at 16, build 16,000 new prison cells and, in foreign policy, develop more positive ties with Russia.

The closing days of the campaign have seen Fillon more openly courting a hard-right vote, evoking France’s sovereignty and identity and promising at his Lille rally to crack down hard on immigration and pursue a zero-tolerance policy on radical Islam.