Openly expressing admiration in France for former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is a bit like asking for ketchup with your entrecote. Or it was. Francois Fillon, an avowed Thatcherite, is the new front-runner in France's 2017 presidential election. He came from far behind to win France's Republican nomination for the presidency, taking 67 percent of votes in Sunday's run-off.
It's amazing how different a candidate looks when power seems within reach. Fillon, a former prime minister and long-time civil servant, used to be thought of as a charmless bureaucrat who lacks, as his Welsh-born wife once put it bluntly, the "killer instinct." And yet his candidacy first killed off that of his former boss, Nicolas Sarkozy, a charismatic figure who as president himself belittled his underling. Then in Sunday's run-off, he blew past the previous front-runner, former prime minister Alain Juppe. Both have now pledged to support Fillon.
With the Socialist Party of President Francois Hollande in complete disarray (Hollande's approval ratings are only 4 percent), Fillon is now considered the favorite to be the next French president. There is a long way to go, but if current polls prove correct -- these days more than ever a big "if" -- Fillon will face the leader of the staunchly anti-immigrant, anti-Europe (think of a Gallic version of the alt-right), National Front party, Marine Le Pen, in the final round of balloting for the presidency in May.
So, it's worth asking, what is "le fillonisme"?
The left and right in France have differed more in rhetoric than in actual policy over the years, one reason voters have increasingly flocked to outsiders like Le Pen. The Jesuit-educated Fillon is a traditional French conservative in the mold of Charles de Gaulle (whose portrait hung in his bedroom as a teenager). Only he wants to (gasp) shrink the French state. To voters accustomed to epic policy climb-downs, especially in the face of union protests, he vows not to pull his punches.
Given his array of policy proposals and rhetoric, he would be comfortable in U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party cabinet, and even perhaps in Donald Trump's. With his support for Vladimir Putin and sharp criticism of the European Union, he may have less obvious common ground with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
As Trump did in the U.S., Fillon looks ready to overturn a Republican Party establishment that promises change but never delivers. He tells voters he doesn't want to replace "left with right" but to launch a new kind of politics for France. (Detractors, such as the independent presidential candidate and former economy minister Emanuel Macron, counter that his record in office was less bold).
His surge poses problems for the populist Le Pen, who has sought to portray all the mainstream candidates as uninspiring and ineffectual. Her boast that the Republican primary was fought on her issues -- immigration, security and a renegotiated relationship with Europe -- is true enough, though they are also the grounds on which pretty much every election in Europe is being fought right now. The daughter of the Jean-Marie Le Pen, the xenophobic firebrand who founded the National Front, Marine has worked hard to broaden her appeal -- sidelining her father and even dropping the Le Pen name from her campaign website in a bid to detoxify the party -- while sticking to her core anti-immigrant, anti-EU message.
Fillon is comfortable on Le Pen's turf. Unlike Sarkozy, who tried to steal some of the National Front voters by trumpeting his support for a ban on the Muslim swim-covering known as a "burkini," Fillon is not in favor of banning religious symbols in public. But he is a social conservative who wrote a recent book on fighting "Islamic totalitarianism."
Fillon is seeking to win back voters who have flocked to the National Front in protest. His plans to make access to social benefits for non-Europeans conditional on two-years of residency is a nod to the identity politics of French nationalists. A practicing Catholic who opposed the same-sex marriage law (but also a realist who pledges to preserve it), he attracted strong support from conservative Catholics in the primary and is likely to continue to appeal to that voter group. His defense of France's colonial past seems aimed at appealing to Gallic pride.