Quote:
Originally Posted by Riverman
France seems way behind. You don't put your spouse on the payroll for a million dollar no show job IN YOUR OFFICE! Do they not have think tanks, lobbying firms and bogus charities in France?
It has slightly amazed me the Fillon's seem to have carried this out with very little subtlety - just straight up giving her money for nothing. However, to be fair, he did also get his mate who owns a magazine to give her 100,000 euros for two book reviews and 'consultancy', so not total amateur hour.
It's impressive he's hung on, though it seemed always the case that if he didn't go willingly the rest of LR effectively had no choice. Whilst winning with him now seems tough, forcing him out the door under protest (if that was even possible) or running two candidates are even more certain to lose strategies - at least I'd guess that's what they thought.
One problem with Juppé seemed to be that, if his support numbers were real they included a lot of non LRs. Apparently he'd shed some current Fillon LR voters and pick up centrist voters who are probably currently voting for Macron. The first part of that doesn't make total sense to me, the few polls that were out didn't show a real bump for Le Pen if Juppé replaced Fillon, but from Juppé's statement yesterday and other spokespeople it appeared that was a fear. Also, given Bayrou has gone over to Macron and the rumours seemed to suggest would stay there, even if Juppé ran they probably feared the centrist vote might not be a sure thing.
It seems the plan is now for the party bigwigs to rally around him, and I saw one person claiming last night there's effectively been a deal done where Fillon will run on a mainstream LR platform (toning down his anti-judge conspiracy populist stuff) and give them places in his team in return for their public support. No idea if that can work, or will even happen.