AFTER an astonishing last-minute surge, François Fillon (pictured), a former prime minister, took a crushing lead in the primary for the French centre-right Republican party on November 20th. With a huge turnout of some 4m voters, he secured roughly 44% of the vote. That was fully 16 points ahead of the other qualifier, Alain Juppé, another former prime minister, who took 28%. The big upset of the night was the elimination of Nicolas Sarkozy, who had served as boss to both of them when he was president of France in 2007-12.
Mr Sarkozy conceded defeat graciously in a televised address, saying that he harboured “no bitterness, no sadness”, and would back Mr Fillon in the run-off vote on November 27th. It was a massive blow to the former president: he had already promised once to retire from public life, after he lost his bid for re-election against François Hollande, only to come back and try again....Continue reading
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