Bookies' favorite for next French president: Emmanuel Macron, standing as an independent
Not all that surprisingly, DU hasn't paid too much attention to foreign politics while the orange gibbon flings his shit around the US political landscape. So here's where things are, because it's turning out rather strange (anyone with proper French political knowledge should correct me):
In late November, the mainstream right wing party (now called 'The Republicans') chose Francois Fillon as their candidate - pretty right wing, even for them, an admirer of Thatcher, and somewhat conciliatory towards Putin, but still pro-EU. Marine Le Pen, whom I think most here have heard of, is even further right on immigration, anti-EU, and is more or less bankrolled by Putin. Her National Front party has a history of racism and anti-semitism; she's done her best to get rid of the latter (throwing her father out of the party, for instance) and tone the former down enough that they make themselves look electable in a rather nasty climate - think Tea Party.
President Hollande has rock bottom popularity polling figures, and decided to not even run for re-election. His Socialist Party chose Benoit Hamon, from the left of the party (proposes a universal basic income, legalising marijuana), over Manuel Valls, a more centrist politician.
The vote is 2 rounds, with the top 2 candidates in the first round going into the 2nd as a runoff. Conventional wisdom was that Le Pen would win the first, with Fillon coming 2nd ; and that Fillon would win the runoff, because the left and centre would never vote for Le Pen, but hold their nose for Fillon.
Until a couple of weeks ago, Fillon was the odd-on favourite to win. Summary of his (British and Irish) bookies' odds history here:
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/european-politics/french-election/next-president/bet-history/francois-fillon/today
(click on 'all history'; the 'Betfair' column on the right is the most continuous; British odds are expressed as a fraction, showing the winnings over the bet, so that "7/4" means if you bet £4, a win means you get the £4 back, plus a further £7. If there's a single number, it means "for a stake of 1". This means, for instance, "1" means you double your money, and is more or less "50% chance of winning", apart from the bookie's profit)
But just over a week ago, it was discovered that Fillon had employed his wife as his assistant, paid for by the government, for a decade, in a well paid job (about €750,000 over the 10 years) but in which she seems to have done no work at all. They are trying to say she did work behind the scenes, from home, but they have an interview from her during the period in which she said she didn't do any work for him. Plus he employed his children for a bit in similarly empty-looking jobs, with government-paid wages. The Republicans are now in the midst of "The Battle of the Plan Bs" (see http://en.rfi.fr/france/20170204-french-press-review-4-february-2017 - probably a good place to keep up with developments).
So Fillon has dropped from around 1/1 on 27th January, to 5/1 or 6/1 - ie not much chance at all. But Le Pen's odds are almost unchanged over that time - about 5/2. Hamon's odds shortened from about 40/1 to 12/1. It is Emmanuel Macron who has benefited, shortening from about 11/4 before the Fillon scandal, to about 1/1 now.
Who he? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron He's young (39), and might be called a business-friendly social liberal. He had been a civil servant and then investment banker, and then joined Hollande's government (he had been a Socialist Party member for a few years). He was appointed as a cabinet minister in 2014, but resigned in 2016, basically to make an independent presidency bid - which looked a long shot, until Fillon collapsed. So he has never actually run in an election before.
Here are the odds for eventual winner:
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/european-politics/french-election/next-president
Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2017
and opinion polls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017
(Fillon isn't that far behind Macron for 1st round voting; if he can find some plausible excuses, and make it look like his wife did do some work, then perhaps he can make a comeback. Both Fillon and Macron look like comfortable winners in the 2nd round against Le Pen, but then again, many polls have underestimated far right performance recently ...)
1st round 23rd April; runoff 7th May.
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