For all her talk of changing France, Ségolène Royal has just showed us that there are some things which do not change: in this case her conviction that French politicians have the right to tell other countries how to behave. East Europeans are still smarting from Chirac’s whiplash in February 2003 about speaking out of turn amongst the Great Powers – indeed the list is long. Following a meeting last night with André Boisclair, the head of the Parti Québecois who is visiting Paris, Royal told reporters that she shared M. Boisclair’s views, principally on “la liberté et souveraineté du Quebec”. That remark, relayed of course by Radio Canada, was jumped on by Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper with a stinging: “Experience shows us that it is totally misplaced for a foreign leader to intervene in the democratic procedures of another country”. Quebec’s premier Jean Charest said that any decision about Quebec’s future would be made in Quebec, while another Canadian politician, Michael Fortier, added that the question of Quebec’s sovereignty would not be decided in the 8^th arrondissement of Paris. Stephen Dion, the head of Canada’s liberal party, visiting Quebec, said that “It destroys her credibility, I don’t think she understands. One does not meddle in the affairs of another country. Canada does not want the break-up of France [presumably a reference to Corsican and other independent movements], I am sure France does not want the break-up of Canada.” But Mme Royal has a gift for not understanding foreign countries. When she visited the Lebanon before Christmas she drew criticism first by meeting a Hezbollah politician, and then by “not hearing” when he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestine with the Nazi occupation of France. On a recent visit to China she praised the Chinese judicial system for its speed (skating over the ten thousand executions each year). Such remarks show deep and damaging inexperience in foreign policy, and earn her nothing but scorn in her own country. Those with longer memories will remember the remarks she made a year ago in praise of Tony Blair – that raised a knee-jerk storm of protest in France.

I get worried when politicians say that when elected they will make something normally considered a right into an obligation, and that this will make us all better citizens. Making a right compulsory is seen as a quick fix to make people feel they’re all part of the same community, working together in the same direction and loving every moment of it. In this election the list includes compulsory voting, compulsory membership of unions and compulsory civic service.

Three of the four principal candidates in this French election have said that when elected they will set up a system of “service civique obligatoire” – comparable to the old national service which was abandoned (in France) only six years ago. The idea is not a bad one, getting young people involved in the community, broadening their horizons and teaching them to help those who can’t help themselves: la cohésion sociale. But why add the word obligatoire? Or, more provocatively, why does not its presence create a storm of protest? I think all of the several projets de loi put forward over the past year or so, by both parties, have included the O word. As I understand it (and comments from French readers about this would be very welcome), the basis of the French Republic is equality, and so what goes for one must, obligatoirement, go for all. You cannot have some people doing civic service and others not. Whereas, for reasons that escape me, in Britain and north America that is felt to be, if not wrong then unnecessary. Since that struck Tocqueville when he visited north America 175 years ago, it is not something new.

Each candidate has a slightly different scheme – with the period of work ranging from a few weeks to six months. Some see it as a mix of military and civic service, others as purely civic. Then there is the thorny question of pay: some candidates are in favour of direct payment (the Socialist Party suggests one third of the minimum wage) others prefer to set the work against paying for the young person’s studies. But in reality either way would cancel out what is heralded as one of the scheme’s great benefits: le brassage, the meeting and mixing of people from different backgrounds. On a third of the minimum wage you can only afford to live with your parents and work as close to home as possible: it would be no different from school.

A recent study by the senate shows that organised civic service failed in four European countries: Belgium, Holland and Italy, where it was to have been compulsory, and Spain where it was to have been voluntary. In all four cases it came unstuck because of union opposition and/or spiralling costs, and I see no reason why that should not be the case in France too. I know in Britain, after a couple of experiments (Millenium Volunteers and Young Volunteer Challenge), the government launched “Youth Volunteering” last May, shortened to “V”, which is actually run mainly by 16 to 25 year olds. The Conservative party launched something similar last October. But always the emphasis is on voluntary. Does it work in the UK? And if so why does the idea of voluntary not catch on in France? Are the two concepts, voluntary and republican, incompatible?

Clearly Ségolène Royal reads France Profonde! I closed yesterday’s post with the words “until that mythic person in whom the whole of France believes – l’homme providential – appears”. Within hours Royal goes on television specifically to announce “France does not need l’homme providential ” Such was the impact of her statement that those very words then made the headline of today’s Le Monde.

More generally, Mme Royal is gathering a head of steam again, after a bad week. In the north of the country she seems to have converted Martine Aubry (mayor of Lille, former minister, creator of the 35 hour working week, daughter of Jacques Delors) to her side, which presumably means that if elected, the 35-hour week is not going to change.

Despite criticisms from some of her team, she has said she will stick to her original calendar - listening to what her compatriots have to say until February the 11th, and only then will she announce her policies. Still up in the north of France, she promised to make social housing a priority, saying “the law of the market can no longer resolve the housing problem”, thus justifying state intervention. Social housing has become a key issue, which I shall post over the next few days.

Meanwhile in the centre of France, François Bayrou, explained again that, according to him, France is split into two camps: in one, a mere 100,000 people who hold the reins (there’s another candidate who seems to have read yesterday’s France profonde - pace ange scalpel who berates me for claiming power in France is concentrated at the top, M. Bayrou clearly agrees with me) and in the other camp the rest of us - 63.4 million. He also promised not to make too many electoral promises: “I listen to the speeches of my comrades and rivals,” he said, “not a day goes by without them spending hundreds of millions of euro in the electoral promises they make. It’s dangerous and it’s not telling the country the truth.” He wants, quite rightly, to bring France’s huge deficit into the public debate. If you’re having a bad day, take a look at the French public debt counter - every second it adds another 1,896 euro a second.

But does he have a chance? The latest polls put the Ségo/Sarko couple with about 30% of the vote each, Le Pen with 15% and Bayrou with 9% - although a recent IFOP poll did put M. Bayrou overtaking Le Pen by 2 points. Two or three other candidates have 1 or 2% each - the other 36 are nowhere. I caught on the radio last night that someone else has declared themselves a candidate (the 44th?), but I missed his name and can’t find a trace in the press. Poor guy - an inauspicious start.

Why are political blogs so popular in France? How is it that they have become a real force in politics, whereas in Britain they are not? The difference is the distribution of power. In France, power is concentrated at the top, in an elite. The French have become used to being governed by a restricted number of highly-trained specialists – yes, I know in Britain people complain about Oxbridge graduates getting the best jobs and in the States you have Harvard, MIT and the Ivy League. But the graduates of those schools are not what the French would call an elite: there are far too many of them. How many graduates are there each year from Oxbridge – perhaps ten thousand? There are only one hundred graduates a year from the most prestigious Ecole Normale d’Administration (and to get in there every applicant must have a minimum of two university degrees plus at least a year’s special preparation course, and since even then only 7% will pass the entrance exam, you start to understand what elite means). The specifically French aspect of ENA graduation is its ranking system: the top graduate goes automatically to the best job, posted by prime ministerial decree: number one is in the Conseil d’Etat, number two in the Cour des Comptes and so on through the ministries with, at the bottom, the Min of Ag and Fish. Personal choice is not an issue – another aspect of the definition of elite.

Certainly, there are more grandes écoles than just the ENA – but not for running the country, and in politics there’s just the Sciences Po. The others, excellent in their own fields, are focussed on commerce, engineering, humanities etc.

A consequence of politicians and administrators coming from just one or two grandes écoles is la pensée unique, which again overrides personal opinion: they have been taught by the same teachers and they have written their essays and exams to please the same people.

Most graduates go straight into the civil service, and from there they can move into parliament: most députés are on secondment from the civil service, and their jobs are kept for them if they are not re-elected. Some civil servants become government ministers without being elected to parliament – like the current prime minister and minister of economics. Certainly the députés represent the people, but they are not representative of their people: there are too few women, almost no one from les classes populaires, or ouvrières and notoriously no one of north or west African origin from the urban ghettoes which surround France’s main towns. Which is not to say that the députés from those areas are not totally committed to their charges, but their electorate wouldn’t feel they were “one of us”.

In such a situation rebellion is inevitable. The other day I quoted De Gaulle’s statement about the impossibility of governing a country proud of possessing 370 different cheeses: in fact he was wrong, it’s perfectly possible, but not the way he saw government. That way insurrection lies. Particularly since the press and media are perceived as being controlled by the same elite. The battle to save Libération is not just about the closure of a national newspaper: Libé is renowned for expressing opinions closer to intelligent, thinking “ordinary” French people. Being taken over by a member of the Rothschild family was seen as the beginning of the slide to conformity.

Blogs, citizen’s newspapers like AgoraVox, perfectly answer the need felt by many French people to contribute to the running of their lives. Etienne Chouard, for example, who takes much of the credit for sinking the European Constitution, was one of the first to use the internet constructively. A teacher of law in a Marseille lycée, he saw legal errors in the proposed constitution and simply posted them on the net. He received some 12,000 questions as a result. That means there were hundreds of thousands out there hungrily waiting, without knowing quite what for.

Now it’s not unusual to see four or five hundred comments after a political posting, with perhaps ten times more reading the piece.

Like many bloggers, M. Chouard says he is not attracted by any one particular party: “Whoever is elected, nothing will change, unless one changes les règles superieures,” he says. And I would guess that he shares that sentiment with many of his compatriots. Ségolène Royal has made huge efforts in the direction of participative democracy, but being an enarque herself, I am not convinced she would go as far as changing les règles superieures. Sarkozy didn’t go to any grande école but I think he is too well encrusted in the system to want to change it. So blogs will continue to be hugely popular in France, read as were Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu, until that mythic person in whom the whole of France believes – l’homme providential – appears.

What’s the point of having 43 candidates if two have already sewn-up everything between them? Why don’t three or four of the middle bunch get together to break the Ségo/Sarko stranglehold? Well, I think that will happen, and when it does, remember: you read it first in the Prospect blog – although I take no credit for it, it’s simple common sense. An alliance of the green-centre-right-leaning-left-but-whoops-not-too-far. The big surprise, a media event selling more tickets even last Sunday’s Sarko-circus, and it could happen on Monday.

François Bayrou, Nicolas Hulot, Corinne Lepage, Dominique Voynet and perhaps Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. Names unknown outside France, and within France some don’t raise much enthusiasm – as individuals, but perhaps as a team? Not very sexy, voting for a coalition of four or five people, but yesterday’s BVA poll shows that as individuals they would take around 20% of the total vote (as against Royal with 15%, Sarkozy with 16%). Perhaps collectively they would take slightly more, if people believed in them. And their presence would unsettle if not unseat Le Pen.

So who are they? François Bayrou (6%) is the best-known politician, I wrote about him on the 13th. Ahead of him in the BVA poll is Nicolas Hulot (9%), who is not a politician at all, but a TV presenter (someone said recently that if Miss France was a candidate she’d do better than most of the “small” candidates). For the last 9 years he has fronted an extremely popular environmental show called Ushuaïa (proof that the title is irrelevant if the content is good). The French have not had the benefit of David Attenborough, David Bellamy, Gerald Durrell or even Armand and Michaela Denis, so falling in love with a man in an anorak talking earnestly about nature while hugging gorillas is a new experience. M. Hulot has his own foundation, and has drawn up an environmental charter which (thanks to recent international developments, particularly the Stern Report in October) he has arm-twisted all the candidates to sign, thus committing them in public to push ecological issues if they are elected. So far, despite their seductive advances, he has refused to ally himself with either Sarko or Ségo: he has said he will announce his decision on whether to run (and if so, in which direction) on Monday. This Monday, the 22^nd. My guess is that instead of making it 42 also-rans, he will announce a coalition with Bayrou, Lepage, Voynet and perhaps Dupont-Aignan.

Corinne Lepage and Dominique Voynet are well-known Green politicians. In 1995 Lepage (1%) became the environment minister in Alain Juppé’s ill-fated government. She lasted two years and has never recovered from the uncomplimentary epithet “a right-wing green”. She stood for president in 2002 (the mayor of a neighbouring village endorsed her – and did again this year) and she’s written a sensible, downloadable book.

Dominique Voynet (2%) took over from Lepage as minister of the environment in 1997, under the Jospin government. She is on the left, the official candidate this year for the Verts and a senator.

An optional extra could be Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (not quoted in the BVA poll): he is unique in that he stands on the moderate right as an alternative to Sarkozy. He resigned from the UMP last Saturday. Listening to an interview with him, what jumped out was his saying the last thing we want is France to be like London, where it’s the law of the jungle. It always amuses me that the country which invented (and uniquely maintains) civilised queuing is said, outre-manche, to be roaming with untamed beasts, red in tooth and claw (but not in politics). I shall return to the theme of the misuse of national stereo-types in the French election on another day.

Can these four or five individualists form a credible coalition? Can they sell that as an idea? Given the creakiness at the top of the bill, given the current importance of ecology and the growing idea of participative democracy, which might be better represented by a coalition than by a single top-down controller, it is entirely possible: Hulot as planetarily-committed president (perhaps charmingly behaving like his grandfather who, as Jacques Tati’s neighbour, inspired the character of that name), Bayrou as PM, the women making France a green, hunter-free haven, and Dupont-Aignan in solar topee, liberally daubed in jungle-juice, warily stalking the corridors of the ministry of economics. It’s intriguing, I think they should give it a try – frankly, apart from possibly Bayrou, they’ve got nothing to lose.

The press and media this morning are having a field-day rubbing salt into Ségolène Royal’s wounds. After a brilliant 2006, she has started the new year badly, and her popularity is slipping. Rumours abound: rifts within the Royalist camp, gossip about domestic tensions, dissections by learned psychologists about the unsustainable pressure on the male (François Holland) seeing his partner in the driving seat. Most of all, the press are piling on the agony after Royal’s forced admission that she and her partner own enough property to qualify for ISF, an annual tax levied on those with property worth more than 760,000 euro. Many old-school socialists claim they are scandalised, but really the whole story is being blown out of all proportion: the Royal/Holland couple are not rich, they have simply saved and spent wisely, thinking no doubt of their four children. But the response, as Jean-Michel Aphatie says, shows the French attitude to money: “In our country we stigmatise getting rich so much, we have thought so little collectively about how a society gets rich, about the creation of wealth within a society, that now we have the Holland/Royal couple hoist by their own petard.” Perhaps that’s why politicians’ exhortations to create a wealthy France get nowhere. François Holland himself has said on television “I don’t like the rich.” None of the above will, in my view, have any bearing on the election, but what must be most galling for Royal is that the so-called scandal broke on the web, the very same which so powerfully pushed up her fortunes last year. This year it could be her undoing. That is, of course, the curse inherent in the uncontrolled web: while citizens’ news and opinions spread like wildfire, so do scurrilous rumours and lies. If that sort of thing persists, it could discredit the whole idea of the web, leading to a back-lash, pushing power back firmly to the carefully controlled centre. Many political bloggers say their sites are being inundated with spam sent by angry socialist party members, getting their revenge for this property/tax story by “killing” the blogosphere.

All this media fuss is of course taking everyone’s eye off the ball. Ségolène Royal’s over-hyped problems are superficial compared to Sarkozy’s, which characteristically are not mentioned at all as he basks in post-coronation euphoria. But he would do well to spare a thought for those around him in his party. The day after Sarkozy’s coronation, prime minister De Villepin gave his new year’s wishes to the press. Last year you had to fight for standing room at the back, this year I could have brought the (extended) family. What changed? Very simple: he tried to reform one small part of France’s archaic employment laws, those dealing with first-time employment, so crucial, particularly for the dispossessed in the ghettoes. The man who thrilled us as, with Gaullist rhetoric, he defied Bush at the UN, is forgotten by those he sought to save. Defying America is a piece of cake compared with trying to reform France, even though everyone knows both need to be done.

Mais ce n’est pas tout, as my favourite TV presenter says. Sitting on Sarkozy’s right-hand is Alain Juppé, another prime minister who tried to reform France and for his pains was invited to inspect the inside of Matignon’s dustbins. Both men have cringed before their television sets, watching the rioting street mob baying for their blood. And then there’s the boss, Jacques Chirac, destroyed because he tried to get his compatriots to accept the European Constitution. Three extremely clever men (whatever one thinks of their politics) incapacitated by trying to make essential changes. I feel little compassion for them personally, but much for France, today whooping with joy because it fondly imagines that all its problems are solved, not by reform, but because it has the second highest birth-rate in Europe. A glorification of motherhood, with echoes of Pétain, as if finally French women understood their real role in life. But those 830,900 babies born last year are only going to make things worse! Each one, educated and kept alive at great public expense, is going to grow up into a rioting, cobble-throwing young person demanding nothing more adventurous than a secure, well-feathered job for life because that is his/her droit aquis. And as for being proud of now having a population of 63.4 million, they should contemplate De Gaulle’s wise words about the impossibility of governing a country of 368 cheeses.

English friends, bemused that I say there are 38 candidates for the presidential election, have been asking me who they are and wondering why nobody talks about them. The answer to the first question is relatively simple: I give the list below. As for the second, well until they get signatures from 500 elected representatives (mayors, regional councillors, members of the Assemblée Nationale or the Senate) they are not officially candidates. The closing date for the signatures is the 16^th March.

My thanks for this list to Nicolas Voisin, creator of the excellent Nues newsblog

Those who could get through to the 2^nd Round:

• Nicolas Sarkozy (51) Union pour un Mouvement Populaire
• Ségolène Royal (53) Partie Socialiste
• Jean-Marie Le Pen (78) Front National
• François Bayrou (55) Union pour la Démocratie Française

Those who are highly unlikely to get through to the 2^nd Round

• Philippe de Villiers (57) Mouvement pour la France
• Marie-George Buffet (56) Parti Communist
• Arlette Laguiller (65) Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ struggle)
• Olivier Besancenot (32) Ligue communiste révolutionnaire
• Dominique Voynet (47) Verts
• Corinne Lepage (55) Cap 21
• Antoine Waechter (57) Mouvement écologique indépendant
• Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (44) UMP souverainiste

Those whose names are not listed in opinion polls, thus we must assume they will sink without trace

• Jacques Cheminade (64) Solidarité et progrès
• Stéphane Pocrain (33) Green ?
• France Garnerre (64) Génération écologique
• Nicolas Miguet (45) Rassemblement des contribuables (those who pay taxes)
  
• Rachid Nekkaz (34) Club des élus Allez France
• Roland Castro (64) Mouvement de l’utopie concrète (an architect)
  
• Christian Chavrier (40) president of Parti fédéraliste
• Jean-Philippe Allenbach (58) former president of Parti fédéraliste
• Jean-Marc Governatori (47) France en action
• Gérard Schivardi (56) Parti des travailleurs
• Yves-Marie Adeline (46) Alliance royale (not the Ségolène sort)
  
• Alain Mourguy (58) Union droite-gauche
• Edouard Filias (27) Alternative libérale
• Frédéric Nihous (39) Chasse Peche Nature et Traditions
• Eric Taffoureau-Millet (43) Attention ! Handicap.
• Jean-Christophe Parisot (39) Collectif des démocrates handicapés
• Michel Baillif (62) Fédération nationale de l’invalidité
• Leila Bouachera (45)
• Soheib Bencheikh (45) former grand mufti of Marseille
• Yvan Bachaud (67)
• Michel Martucci (75) Conféderation nationale des syndicats CID (short contracts) artisans commercants
• Jean-Michel Jardry (56) Centre national des indépendants et paysans
• Robert Baud (57) Majorités des minorités en souffrance morale et sociale
• Romdane Ferdjani (59)
• Lucien Sorreda (64) les revenus bas tirés vers le haut
• Yves Aubry (38) permettre aux Rmistes (those dependent on social security), aux pauvres de vivre décemment
• Jean-Paul Le Guen (63) apolitique
• Armand Galea : Pour l’honneur de France
• Jean-Philippe Allenbach : fédéraliste candidat de la province
• Christian Garino : Esperanto liberté
• Daniel Lacroze-Marty: Cesprimer

The undecided:

• Nicolas Hulot (51) very popular TV presenter of ecological issues.
• José Bové (54) firmly against globalization.
• Dominique de Villepin (53) UMP, but if he stands presumably independent right.

The figures in brackets refer to the candidate’s age, not, as it would in France, the département where he/she lives.

I leave you to calculate the average age, sex and skin-colour.

As you see, there are 43, with another few perhaps to come. Given high days and holidays that is enough to have a fresh president every Monday morning of the year, an entirely equitable system and since we won’t remember any of their names, they would slip quietly into the sort of quasi-anonymity of the Irish, German and Italian presidents.

Although it’s only just getting under way, it’s fascinating to see how the campaign is shaping. At the moment it has practically nothing to do with traditional left against traditional right, but with a conflict between two different approaches to democracy.

The writer of le blog politique says that Ségolène Royal will not make it into the 2^nd round because she has not got what it takes. France, the writer says, is not Sweden or Denmark, it needs a real head of state, a boss. A lot of people, not only French, would agree: leaders need to be strong managers, looking after everything so you, the citizen, can get on with your life.

But others say that system of top-down government no longer works, because it inherently breeds disillusion with the leader. Messrs Blair, Bush and Chirac are current examples of voter disillusion. Consequently, people vote less and less (even for last Sunday’s election of the UMP candidate, open only to committed, paid-up party members, nearly a third of the members didn’t vote). These critics of the command-and-control system claim that it would be better to move power outwards, decentralising it, giving responsibility to everyone. That idea is certainly catching on in France, and partly explains why Ségolène Royal has done so extraordinarily well over the past 12 months, defeating her “strong manager” rivals who were, 12 months ago, far better placed than she. The problem, or the question, of course is, what has this “soft” idea of taking power away from managers and giving it to everyone, got to do with the “hard” business of running a major country? Conventional wisdom says one is reality, the other for the birds.

Advocates of the second, decentralised approach point to one major, international company that works in this amorphous, let-each-unit-decide-for-itself way. It’s a big company, most readers not only know it, they carry its calling-card on them at all times. It’s called Visa. Visa, by conservative estimates, is one of the most successful companies ever created – in fact it is the biggest commercial structure in the world. Since Dee Hock set it up 30 years ago, Visa has grown an estimated 10,000% and still grows at 20% a year. Yet Visa is not owned by anyone, nor can you buy shares in it. It is a network of 22,000 banks across 200 countries, each bank respecting its own rules and the rules of its country, yet it also fitting into the trans-frontier Visa package.

How Visa evolved as a disorganised, deliberately chaotic organisation is a fascinating story in itself, a precursor of the internet and Open Source. To find out more, go to Wikipedia – another example of a highly successful open system. It’s that sort of system which some French voters are beginning to think may work for politics too. Thierry Crouzet, an influential French blogger, with some 3,000 visits a day, has much on his site well worth reading, and his new book Le Cinquième Pouvoir, deserves to be translated. Have a look too at his recent blog on Wikinomics. But Thierry does not imagine that open source democracy, or the 5^th power, will overnight replace the present system of government, any more than Open Source will replace Microsoft. But in the same way that Open Source was born as a reaction to Microsoft, and simply by existing has an enormous and beneficial influence on that company, so an open source democracy might breathe fresh life into the frankly unappealing politics dominated by Messrs Bush, Blair and Chirac.

“The real work of the 5^th power is done by little imperceptible touches, a slow accumulation of grains of sand, which will be capable of creating monstrous avalanches.”

Naturally, there are plenty of voters who see that as utopist twaddle, who feel a strong boss is the only workable answer. Perhaps next time they delve for their plastic card they should wonder who is the boss of Visa.

Sunday is the day of Nicolas Sarkozy’s “investiture”, “dubbing”, “consecration” or “enthronement” as official presidential candidate for the centre-right UMP party. I’m deliberately using the words served-up by the French press, odd though they may seem to English-speakers, to show how the French themselves receive this event: it is a monarchic moment, full of echoes of the anointing of kings at Reims. However much M. Sarkozy may speak of “rupture”, continuity with the past runs deep. For Sarkozy, this wasteful (cost: 3.5 million €), technically unnecessary ritual (there are no other nominations for the job) in front of some 50,000 party members is almost more important than being elected president, for it means he has finally been accepted by his “family”, another word dear to the French, meaning all those who have been trying so hard to stab him in the back. The kind of family most of us would do anything to avoid. Their war-cry “Tout sauf Sarkozy” – anyone except Sarkozy – today rings hollow as, alone on stage, Sarkozy soaks up the adulation. But can it last?

I will admit that as a character Sarkozy fascinates me. In July 2004 I wrote a profile of him for Prospect, I think the first one for an English-language magazine, and I won’t repeat what I wrote there. But since his early teens he has had one idea in his head, to the exclusion of everything else: to be president. Ambition is too weak a word, he is obsessed with power. Yet his image of what power is seems at times childish – it’s a noisy, look-at-me sort of power, like today’s absurd extravaganza in Paris. It has to be bigger, brasher, bolder than the Socialist Party’s primary (which was genuine, with a serious choice between three contenders), with more people, better stars.

If he is elected president, he will become one of the most powerful men in the world. He will be difficult for other leaders to work with, for I believe he will enjoy throwing his weight around. But most dangerously for France, he is an angry man who sows discord everywhere he goes. Of course he has his ultra-loyal team, who have helped him get to his present position, but his past is full of treachery and betrayals – principally of those who cared for him most, his mentors Charles Pasqua and Chirac. His cartoon image, popularised by Le Canard Enchainé, is with two horns, a tail and a fork. He is not Mr. Nice Guy. “Use him as a doormat,” Chirac once said. “It’s the only thing he understands.” France needs reform, not revolution. Sarkozy wants the sort of adoration he’s getting today, with 50,000 people chanting his name: but in France adoration and reform do not go together. If, like Chirac, he wastes his time in the Elysée Palace, France will be badly off indeed.

He has enormous energy, the French call him l’homme pressé, speedy Sarkozy, but his energy is the fractious, disruptive kind, creating havoc and division in its wake. That kind of energy could rapidly become self-destructive during the election campaign. There are predictions of a major upset before the first-round vote, and despite the fact that his two closest friends, Martin Bouygues and Arnaud Lagardère, own and control much of the media, the febrile, over-ambitious and basically unloved Sarkozy is the most likely to give it.

On Sunday Nicolas Sarkozy will be nominated official candidate for the centre-right UMP – the party dominating the Assemblée Nationale, formed by Jacques Chirac and his clan in 2002 as a personal power-base. Yet Chirac will not be present for this ritual consecration, and according to Le Canard Enchainé he has forbidden his wife to go. Many of the hard-core Chiraquie refuse to endorse the man who could be “their” man at the Elysée Palace for the next 5 years. Why is Chirac fuelling this public rift at the very moment when only unity and solidarity will win the prize?

Probably the only thing Jacques Chirac has in common with Tony Blair is that both men refuse to say when they are going, taking pleasure in teasing out their power to its last drop. The difference is that Chirac has not even said that he is going. Astonishingly he could wait until the middle of March before making his announcement.

Few imagine that he could possibly re-present himself – indeed it would be grotesque if he did. This year he will be 75, his record during the past 12 years as president is scarcely convincing, many would say appalling, his rating in the country slides inexorably lower. Since the referendum on Europe in May 2005 he has been like a ship stuck on the mud at low tide. Yet since the beginning of the year he has been enthusiastically launching project after project as if he will be at the helm to steer them along. Not the behaviour of a man on the brink of retirement. He is deliberately sowing uncertainty about the future, with the sole aim of making the hated Sarko sweat. And yet both are supposedly on the same side.

Chirac is a far more dangerous to Sarkozy than Ségolène Royal. Ever since the last presidential election Sarkozy has been saying “The next one is mine,” At first he seduced many with his openly-stated desire for a break with the present regime, a new, re-vitalised “liberated” France. But then it started to unravel. First of all abroad, as observers noted that, as Minister of the Economy, this advocate of the free market was protecting French lame ducks, proclaiming even the moribund “must not be lost to foreigners”, that “the State has a duty to protect national champions.” His compatriots not unnaturally liked that, but even they began to wonder, as he strode about the sickeningly run-down urban ghettoes, surrounded by wagon-loads of gun-totting police, calling some of those forced to live there “scum”. That was the start of his hard-line, zero-tolerance, I-may-be-small-but-by-gob-I’m-tough stance. Any initial appeal quickly soured as errors of judgement and fact were not acknowledged let alone apologised for. He still has a considerable following, as Sunday will prove, but it seems to be slipping. Is that what Chirac is hoping? That Sarko will alienate enough so that the elder statesman, serene, fatherly can step in to carry the flame? Again, it is grotesque to imagine that is a “plan” – apart from anything else it could result in a Royal/Le Pen second round. Or, more interestingly, a Royal/Bayrou second round – François Bayrou being perhaps the real contender in this election. Chirac may be opening the door to him – knowingly?