Nicolas Sarkozy is not the first head of government to be in a love triangle with Mick Jagger, now is he?
There was also Pierre Trudeau. The prime minister of Canada in the 1960s and 70s was married to the wild Margaret. And after their separation she was the subject of much gossip linking her with Jagger.
Can you think of any other unions between top pop stars and top politicians?
Lembit Öpik and the Cheeky Girl (Gabriela Irimia) are disqualified on both counts.
Any other ideas?
(bonus question. Name two Prime Ministers with the same first name as Paul McCartney)
I forgot to post on Simon Heffer's Wednesday article. But I really can't just let it pass.
It was a variant on the standard September column. You know the one - "I've been having a lovely holiday in France and come back to realise that Britain is horrible. Why can't we have high speed trains and better bistros".
The Heffer version is "I have been having a lovely holiday in France and come back to realise that British Conservatives are horrible. Why can't we have high speed Sarkozys and nice bistros."
So why can't British Conservatives be just like M. Sarkozy? I think you will find, Simon, that the answer is:
a. that we are not living in France, and issues that resonate there, given its recent history, may not work in the same way over here,
and
b. that the French Socialists have not moved to the centre as new Labour has, so cannot be fought from the Right in the same way.
If Monsieur Heffer is not persuaded by either of these then he might like to explain a couple of interesting omissions from his approved list of Sarkozy's right wing policies. Why did he leave out the Frenchman's support for industrial intervention and more powers for Brussels?
Surely if he thinks the Tories should copy Sarkozy, he thinks they should copy these things too?
The decision by President Sarkozy to appoint Bernard Kouchner to the French Foreign Minister is one of the most interesting developments in world politics this year.
Who is Kouchner? This is what Andre Glucksmann had to say when adding Kouchner to Time's list of 100 icons and heroes: Bernard Kouchner was first celebrated for fishing out the boat people who fled Communist Vietnam and for bearing sacks of rice on his ministerial shoulder in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia. Nelson Mandela once whispered to him, "Thanks for intervening in matters that don't concern you."
Kouchner invented "the duty of international meddling." He favours intervention — peaceful if possible, military if necessary — to stop massacres and those who commit them. In the name of human rights, he approved the U.S. intervention in Iraq: "The No. 1 weapon of mass destruction is Saddam Hussein," he said. He lost loved ones in the attack against U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. He deplores the blunders of the Americans, but rejects the I-told-you-sos of the so-called peace camp.
No pacifist consensus. Forget pleasant sentiments. This humanitarian breaks taboos and reveals matters that render us sleepless. Faced with the globalised inhumanity that is burning the 21st century, Kouchner is introducing a new humanism without geographical or political borders. He does it not to open the gates of paradise, but to bolt the gates of hell
The man who established Doctors Without Borders supported Royal in the French election, urging a coalition between her and Bayrou against Sarkozy. So his appointment and agreement to serve is a surprise.
It is also important for two reasons.
First, it shows that Sarkozy is serious about breaking with traditional French foreign policy. Kouchner's philosophy is at variance with, say, that of Chirac. This New York Times book review puts Kouchner in context. Naturally, the book itself (by Paul Berman) is even more worthwhile, and a relatively quick read.
Second, the alliance between right and left is fascinating. There is an obvious community of interest between liberal interventionists and neo-con atlanticists. This the first formal test of political alliance.
A political moment for celebration.
Michel Gurfinkel has written a superb, long commentary for The Wall Street Journal about the condition of France. The key to that country's slow decline, he reckons, is the "constitution behind the constitution": the state bureaucracy. It has been estimated that since the 1970s, 70% of all members of Parliament have been civil servants of some sort, including university professors - almost all universities are state-run - and high-school teachers. When it comes to cabinet members, almost 90% are enarchs. Out of 17 prime ministers since 1958, six have been enarchs and another nine have been civil servants or former civil servants, former military men, or former employees of state-run companies. Among presidents, only one, Mitterrand, was a private person; the other four were essentially state servants, and two of them, Messrs. Giscard d'Estaing and Chirac, were enarchs.
He goes on to say: The more absolute their power, the more the enarchs have tended to run France in their own interest, while assuaging the citizenry with bribes of all sorts. One such bribe, rhetorical but no less effective for that, has taken the form of nationalistic posturing, usually directed against the United States; a favourite slogan of the enarchs is that France's mission is to uphold and protect a superior continental civilization based on the welfare state against the Anglo-Saxon model of "predatory" free-market capitalism. Structural problems - an aging population, swelling immigration, the public debt - have been ignored.
So shouldn't we be more disturbed at the massive growth of public-sector jobs over the last decade in the UK? Aren't those 5.9 million public sector employees a lobby-group for French-style stasis?
Robbie Millen
 David Blunkett had this to say this morning:
Those who see Nicolas Sarkozy as some kind of miniature Margaret Thatcher or a hardline right-winger, would be very wide of the mark.
His instincts are those of international capital but his understanding is, crucially, that globalisation means that France, like Britain, has to face the world as it really is. In other words he is a modernist, a pragmatist and, yes, a committed progressive.
No.
In his recent book, Testimony, Mr Sarkozy is very clear that he is on the Right and wishes to describe himself as on the Right. He goes so far as to take issue with his colleagues on the Right who shun the label.
Mr Sarkozy is a progressive if you think right-wing ideas are progressive. I do. It seems from his comments that Mr Blunkett does too. Mr Blunkett's statements about the French election are more eloquent about his own politics than about those of the new French President.
Meanwhile, over in France, Sarkozy is sitting pretty. The TV debate was really Ségolène Royal's last chance to stop him. The result? If anything the gap has widened. This morning TNS-Sofres in Le Figaro has Sarko on 54.5 per cent and Ségo on 45.5 per cent, while Ipsos has 54 per cent playing 46 per cent.
 The opinion polls are unambiguous. Every one since the first round points to a Sarko victory this weekend. Yes, they are close. But if you take them together as a single sample a statistician would tell you that the chances that Ségo is in fact ahead at the moment is, to all intents and purposes, zero.
There has been a great deal of comment about Mr Blair's attitude to M. Sarkozy. But that isn't what matters, of course. What matters is Gordon Brown's attitude to him. And as with most things, we don't really know what that is.
Martin Kettle wrote rather well last week about Brown's ambivalence: He knows Sarkozy from their days as fellow finance ministers. The Browns and Sarkozys have dined à quatre. Most importantly of all, Brown is comfortable with Sarkozy's deregulatory economic instincts and with his openness to America. And yet Brown hesitates. When Sarkozy launched his election campaign in London, Blair met him while Brown made his excuses. Brown has put out feelers towards the Royal camp too, which Blair has not.
The columnist ascribes this to indecision about the direction of his foreign policy. I found that quite convincing. But whatever the reason, Brown is right to be cautious about Sarkozy.
Sarko's desire to have a strong single European policy on immigration, for instance, and a European treaty with no referendum could cause Brown problems on the left and the right simultaneously.
But I was impressed at the news about the dinner à quatre. Getting Mr Sarkozy to have dinner with Mrs Sarkozy is quite an accomplishment.
Nicolas Sarkozy is supposed to be the Thatcher figure who will drag France out of the economic doldrums. Then what is this comment about? Taking to an English journalist, he said: You, the English, I love England a lot, you are world champions! As soon as your growth falls, what do you do? Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and the Governor of the Bank of England meet and decide to lower rates, to lower the pound
What? It’s ten years since Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England independence to set interest rates. Sarkozy has been the Finance Minister of France since then. Not impressive.
More gaffes like that and his lead in the opinion polls might just shrink. Although, if the French really cared about economic competence they probably won’t be voting for Ségolène. So much for choice.
Murad Ahmed
Tim King writes an excellent column in Prospect about France. Luckily, he blogs too. This post is all about Nicolas Sarkozy's fury that Francois Bayrou is still the centre of media attention: "In a football competition," says Sarkozy, "the final is between the number one and the number two: the number three does something else but he’s not in the final"
Ouch! In return, Bayrou likens Sarkozy to Silvio Berlusconi, accuses him of dangerous authoritarianism and says that he is a threat to France's social fabric. But the failed centrist candidate is also rude about Sego: her programme, multiplying the role of the State, perpetuating the illusion that it’s the State’s role to look after everything, and that it can look after everything, is going in precisely the wrong direction
So what is Bayrou's game? clearly and perhaps cleverly Bayrou is looking beyond the presidential election to the parliamentary elections in June. In a sense he is already dismissing the president, whoever he or she is, as irrelevant, for if Bayrou’s party with its 7 million voters can maintain its strength and unity through the next series of elections it may be able to sideline whoever is president into a parliamentary minority. If he were able to do that, holding the balance of power in that way would indeed be a real victory for Bayrou. To do this, Bayrou is forming a new party, the Democratic Party, broader than his present UDF, representing a wider electorate, perhaps even the far right and left.
Interesting. Bayrou seems to be mixing things up: Charles Bremner reports on how Sego's cosying up to the failed centrist candidate is infuriating the Left of the Socialist Party.
Robbie Millen
Here are 2 more French polls. You’ll notice that TNS-Sofres has Sarkozy ahead 51-49. And the Ipsos poll sees a 0.5 point shift in Royal’s favour.
But it’s much too early to tell if these polls represent a real shift. They are more likely simply to be fluctuations within the margin of error, or, perhaps, a result of different polling methods.
The TNS-Sofres vote has the Bayrou vote skewed much more to Royal than Ipsos does. The next day or two should shed more light on who is right.
 Another French Presidential poll this morning and another saying the same thing - Sarko 54 per cent, Sego 46 per cent.
The Ipsos poll comes with three further useful pieces of information.
The first is that the straight choice between the two remaining candidates has been producing almost exactly the same score since the 27th January of this year. If you follow this link, and take a look at the graph you'll see what I mean.
The second is that the Bayrou vote is not a centre right vote, it is a centre vote. It is split right down the middle - 38 per cent for Sego, 35 per cent for Sarko.
Finally, the Le Pen vote isn't pure protest - it is part of the right. It goes 79 per cent to Sarko.
All of this confirms Murad's analysis yesterday.
I'm not sure whether the price of your house is affected by whether it is located in a right or left-leaning area but for those who have holiday homes in France, or for the plain curious, here's a map of how the country voted.
P.S. Those of you - of which there will be many - who own property in French Polynesia will be interested to know that it voted for Sarko.
Robbie Millen
There’s a going to be a lot of chatter about the centrist François Bayrou being the kingmaker in France’s Presidential run off. Poppycock.
Yes, Bayrou’s 18% share of the vote make his voters a peculiarly valuable commodity in this election. In his latest dispatch from Paris, Charles Bremner says: The pollsters disagree over the key question: which way the voters of François Bayrou, the centrist with 18 percent, will swing in the run-off. Everything will hinge on the Sarko fear factor and Royal's credibility. Bayrou will give some guidance to his seven million supporters on Wednesday but he is unlikely to back either Ségo or Sarko. The two big camps are publicly ruling out any pacts but they are privately wooing Bayrou hard
But unless the Bayrou supporters head into Royal’s camp en masse, it would seem that Sarkozy has a lock on this election. Have a gander at this table of nerdish delight I’ve created for you:
Candidates on the left: Candidates on the right:
Royal: 25.84% Sarkozy: 31.11%
Besancenot: 4.11% Le Pen: 10.51%
Buffet: 1.94% Villiers: 2.24%
Voynet: 1.57% Nihous: 1.15%
Laguiller: 1.34%
Bove: 1.32%
Schivardi: 0.34%
Total: 36.46% Total: 45.01%
This is a rough and ready way of looking at the results, but nonetheless the Right have a lead over the Left of more than 8.5%. Sunday’s vote suggests a crucial shift to the Right in the minds of French voters. To think otherwise, as this piece by Philippe Marliere, a senior lecturer in French politics at University College London does, is wishful thinking.
Murad Ahmed
Kim Il Jong doesn't know this but the facts of life are liberal. A country can't buck markets or isolate itself from globalisation. If it does it will, as George Walden put it on Saturday, slowly vegetate. So Nicolas Sarkozy's reasonable poll leading is a relief. But look at this: some 9% of the electorate voted for the Pyongyang suicide option by backing Besancenot, Laguiller, Buffet, Schivardi and Bove, a motley collection of Trots, Communists and hard-leftist anti-globalisers. I know that most people will find it utterly disturbing that 10% backed Jean-Marie Le Pen; I however find it just as gruesome that a similar number of voters supported that tested-to-destruction, bloodstained, braindead ideology of Communism. The Trots need to read this article and go see The Lives of Others.
If we accept that Sarkozy, Royal and Bayrou are members of the reality-based community (I have doubts about the latter two), it still means that a quarter of the French electorate decided to take a holiday from reality and set their face against the liberal facts of life. No wonder France is in trouble.
Robbie Millen
 Yesterday’s remarkably high turnout has led some to say it’s a great moment for French democracy. Well, oui and non.
Although many commentators are heralding far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen’s “abject” fourth place in the polls, he still got just over 10% of the vote. Imagine one in ten people here voting for the BNP? Worrying.
The big winner was Sarkozy though, successfully snuffing out the threat of Le Pen on his right flank, but also grabbing enough of the centre to get above 30% (significantly more than commentators were predicting before the poll). And immediate polling just after the first round vote was announced showed most pollsters give him a healthy 4-8 point lead over Ségolène Royal. With only a month until the next poll, that’s huge.
Still, expect both candidates make a grab for the centre ground, where all those friendly, unpolarised, ever-so-nice floating voters are. As Charles Bremner suggests he must today, Sarkozy’s already trying to soften up his image: To unite the French people, to be able to speak on their behalf, to be able to govern, you must be able to love
Ewwww.
Murad Ahmed
 Geek alert: as well as loving elections, I love trivia. So here's a great comination of the two - a French presidential quiz.
Here's a taster: Nicolas Sarkozy, the presidential candidate of the centre-right UMP, was a protégé of Mr Chirac. In 1995 Mr Chirac booted Mr Sarkozy from his cabinet because:
- Mr Sarkozy had an extramarital affair with another cabinet member
- Mr Sarkozy backed a rival to Mr Chirac in the 1995 presidential election
- Mr Chirac disapproved of Mr Sarkozy's appearance in an advertisement for EuroDisney
- Mr Sarkozy was found to have embezzled public funds
Oh I do like multiple choice. Find out the answer and take the quiz here.
Murad Ahmed
I’m an election geek. I’m the kind of person who throws election night parties. This involves spending a night gobbling down umpteen boxes of Pringles while screaming at my even geekier friend to refresh the BBC webpage to find out what the latest exit polls have to say. I only feel shame about the Pringles.
So I’m getting a tad excited about the French presidential election. Not because it matters (though it does, and this Economist leader and New Yorker piece explains why), but because it’s so damn close.
Political Betting’s headline and story makes me consider stocking up on more Pringles: Sarkozy and Royal going to the wire
New poll has her neck and neck with Sarkozy
With just four days to go before the French Presidential election a new poll has Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal and Right-wing front runner Nicolas Sarkozy both on 50% should the two of the make the run off of the top two candidates. Sarkozy, however, is still in the lead for the first round of voting.
But with the spoiler centrist candidate François Bayrou still polling well, and far right racist Jean-Marie Le Pen another unpredictable factor, even the first round is too close to call.
In a post well worth reading, Charles Bremner says the British bookies (betting on the election is banned in France) who made Sarkozy a dead cert a few weeks ago are starting to sweat. I just need something to calm down.
Murad Ahmed
UPDATE: Know your Sarko from your Ségo? Take the French Presidential quiz here!
I'd like you to read something, if that's not too much of a nuisance. It's reasonably short, but I think quite important. It is by a man called Andre Glucksmann and is called Why I Choose Nicolas Sarkozy.
It's important because of its arguments - it demonstrates what's at stake in France and how much is riding on Sarkozy's victory.
And it's important because of its author. Glucksmann belongs to that group of left intellectuals that has bravely championed international human rights. He is an ally of Christopher Hitchens, of Paul Berman and of Bernard Kouchner. Here he unequivocally chooses the candidate of the right over that of the left. It is an early sign that one consequence of the war on terror might be a huge international re-alignment, changing what it means to be on the left and on the right.
(Hat Tip: Harry's Place)
 Politicalbetting.com has a novel reason for predicting a Royal victory in the French Presidential elections. He says that her gender may be critical:
Just looking at the countries of the world that have had women leaders, the UK, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, Sri Lanka - to name but a few, the female contenders have won the first time their electorates have had the chance of voting for a woman.
What about Kim Campbell?
 Our man in Paris Charles Bremner has an interesting post on his blog today about Segolénè Royal, the French Socialist candidate for President.
Mme Royal has often been described as the French Blair. But now, under pressure, she is seeking to shore up support by appealing to her party's core vote. Perhaps she has been reading too much Simon Heffer.
The correct answer to falling ratings is to move towards voters rather than away from them. Mr Sarkozy and centrist Francois Bayrou are doing well by trying to appeal to centre vote. Sarkozy is not shifting his position, just being careful to moderate his image.
In response Royal is doing the opposite - moving to the left to satisfy her base.
Who is advising her? Why does anyone think this will work?
Isn't it obvious that you can't beat candidates who have centre ground appeal by moving away from the centre?
The Colson Award 2007 are off to a flying start.
A Mr Nicolas Sarkozy has written in to say that he passed the famous blogger and Times columnist Oliver Kamm in Oxford Street. M. Sarkozy did not wish to interrupt Mr Kamm "as I could see he was thinking about one of Naom Chomsky's conceptual errors".
Beat that.
It's a compulsory middle-class thing. I love Paris. It just feels so much more civilised, so much more chic, so much more, well, so much more bourgeois than London, where ugly high-rises and ugly lowlifes menace the streets. But, I suspect, the price of central Paris being so lovely and bourgeois is that life out in the concrete suburbs is miserable. Charles Bremner's superb Times blog has kept a steady eye on the car-torching rituals (tomorrow is the anniversary of the last big riots) of those bits of France that the middle classes rarely see. Despite the ferocity of the disturbances, they made no impact on the day-to-day life of middle-class Parisians. The riots, like the rioters, were effectively segregated.
I cannot help but wonder whether the French, like the Americans, have stumbled across geographical apartheid as a way of dealing or containing their underclass. This provocative article by Charles Murray , first published in The Sunday Times, has always stuck in my mind. It's worth reading. Here's a money quote: The underclass, the most important domestic policy issue of the 1980s, is no longer even a topic of conversation in the United States. The American underclass isn’t any smaller. The underclass is no longer an issue because we successfully put it out of sight and out of mind. Consider the presence of the underclass in American cities. Fifteen or 20 years ago, the homeless, panhandlers and street hustlers were everywhere. Today they are virtually gone in most cities (San Francisco remains the exception). The social segregation of the underclass has been nearly perfected. We have not learnt how to compensate for the parenting deficits that cripple the lives of children of the underclass, but we have learnt how to avoid dealing with the consequences.
In London though, the middle class and the underclass live cheek-by-jowl. It is harder to "avoid dealing with the consequences". The horrible question is whether Paris-style social segregation might be desirable? My reaction is that penning the urban poor into isolated ghettos is immoral. But I know if I was mugged tomorrow I'd change my mind.
Robbie Millen
Daniel Finkelstein
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