Fillon says sorry after his party tweets image of Macron as hooked-nose banker

Raphaël Glucksmann, a prominent French essayist, tweeted the image, saying: “They’ve reached this point ... hooked nose, the alliance of capitalism and the Bolsheviks (the red sickle and the cigar) ... Even the [far-right] Front National wouldn’t dare.”

Benjamin Griveaux, a spokesperson for Mr Macron, told AFP: “The use of terms and imagery that draw on antisemitic fantasy is extremely worrying for the quality of debate in the republic but also for the state of mind that prevails in certain [party] headquarters.”

References were made to the images' similarity to those used during the 1940's, when a French Vichy government, operating under the aegis of the Nazis, regularly released antisemitic propaganda. 

On Saturday evening, Mr Fillon released a public statement condemning the incident and saying: “I cannot tolerate my party publishing caricatures that use the codes of antisemitic propaganda. I understand the anxiety this could have caused because it evokes the drawings of a dark period of our history and conveys an ideology I have always fought against.

“The political battle is tough, but it must stay dignified.”