Himalayauk himalaya Gaurav Uttarakhand
The working classes helped deliver Brexit in the U.K. and send Donald Trump to the White House. In France’s presidential election, they may pose the biggest threat to embattled front-runner Francois Fillon.
With prosecutors opening a preliminary criminal probe into claims that Fillon’s wife improperly earned about 500,000 euros ($530,000) while working as a parliamentary aide, concern is mounting among some of the candidate’s allies that his perceived indifference to the day-to-day struggles of ordinary people is becoming an electoral risk.
Pollsters say the working class, the single biggest group of voters, is overwhelmingly opposed to the Republicans’ candidate. That is a weakness the nationalist Marine Le Pen is seeking to exploit to boost her chances of a Trump-style shock.
“If we continue like this we are going to push the entire middle class into the arms of the National Front,” Rachida Dati, a former Fillon minister with whom he has often tussled, said Jan. 20 in a radio interview. “If Marine Le Pen becomes the candidate of real wages, of jobs and workers and tax cuts, then watch out — we’re going to hit the wall.”
The establishment candidate’s economic plans are the sort of medicine that many top executives and international institutions have been demanding for years. But to many on lower incomes, already angered by reports about Fillon’s lifestyle, that sounds like a threat to their standard of living.
Bookmakers still make the Republican the strong favorite to become France’s next president because the two-round system makes it difficult for outsiders like Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron to amass a majority. Prices gathered by Oddschecker.com give Fillon a 55 percent chance of winning, with his main rivals on less than 30 percent.
