The surprise winner of the first round of France's rightwing presidential primary immediately came under attack today, with Francois Fillon's rivals slamming his radical reform agenda as "ultra-conservative" and "unworkable".
Former prime minister Fillon, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, pulled off a stunning upset Sunday, coming from behind to knock his former boss Nicolas Sarkozy out of the race and beating the favourite, Alain Juppe, into distant second.
Fillon will go head-to-head with fellow former premier Juppe in a run-off yesterday that is widely expected to decide France's next leader after a prospective duel next year with far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
An Opinionway poll showed Fillon winning the primary by 56 per cent to Juppe's 44 per cent.
His rivals today sought to halt his march, with former centre-right prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin slamming his plans to cut half a million civil service jobs and force public servants to work longer hours.
"There is no chance of implementing reforms through brute force," Raffarin, an ally of Juppe, told BFM television, calling them "unworkable".
An advisor to President Francois Hollande described 62-year-old Fillon as a "red rag to left-wing voters". At the other end of the spectrum, the vice-president of Le Pen's National Front (FN), Florian Philippot, said Fillon's economic proposals were "the most extreme" of all candidates.
With the Socialists in disarray under the spectacularly unpopular Hollande, the second round of the presidential election in May is shaping up as a showdown between the winner of the right-wing primary and Le Pen.
Polls show both Juppe and Fillon would easily defeat the far-right leader but her rivals have warned that all bets are off in a country where the anti-elite sentiment that propelled Donald Trump to the White House is running high.
Sarkozy's defeat at the hands of his former premier Fillon, a man he once nicknamed "Mr Nobody", brought the curtain down on the ex-president's attempt to revive his 40-year career.
His hard-right campaign and failure to enact many of his promises when in power from 2007-2012 spurred millions of voters to the polls to block his comeback.
Around 15 per cent of the four million voters who took part in the open-to-all primary were leftist supporters, an Elabe poll showed. Many are thought to have voted against Sarkozy.
Fillon, a car-racing enthusiast, emerged as a compromise choice between Sarkozy and Juppe, a moderate nine years his senior whose reform agenda is seen by many conservatives as too timid.
Results from over 95 per cent of polling stations on Monday gave Fillon 44.1 per cent of the votes cast, ahead of 28.5 per cent for Juppe and 20.6 per cent for Sarkozy. Four other candidates each scored under five per cent.
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