Nicolas Sarkozy: where’s the boeuf?
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The first round of France’s presidential elections is eight months away, but interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy is already “all but enthroned as the Next Big Thing” on the centre-right of French politics, as The Independent’s John Lichfield puts it; he is the heavy favourite to clinch his party’s nomination for the presidency in January. His likely opponent will be the Socialists’ Ségolène Royal.
Sarkozy has been tough on law and order and immigration – he lambasted last autumn’s rioters as “scum” – and as a result has prompted former tennis star Yannick Noah to promise he will leave the country if ‘Sarko’ is elected. But while his “shoot-from the-hip” style has made him enemies, one of France’s leading pollsters reckons he can count on widespread support, says Jason Burke in The Observer.
The working classes like the fact that he speaks their language, while small businessmen and big bosses should support him. With respect to economic policy, he “carries any hopes the French may have for free-market policies”, notes the FT. His recent bestseller, Testimony, criticised France
for being work-shy, while he has stressed the need to break with past policies and change France’s social model – encapsulated in his favoured phrase ‘la rupture’.
Last weekend, he told his party’s youth conference that Socialist measures, such as the 35-hour maximum working week, had ruined their employment prospects and claimed that his “greatest ambition” was to halve the national jobless rate to 5% within five years.
It all sounds promising, but where are the means to realise the free-market end, asks the FT, noting that he didn’t even call for the 35-hour week to be ditched outright. So far, Sarkozy’s programme amounts to nothing more than “gesture politics from a pragmatist or opportunist”.
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