A fascinating book and useful complement to this blog and the current election campaigns in France is Joe Trippi’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised……..”. Trippi is two things: a creative computer geek and a highly experienced US political campaign manager. In 2003 he took over rank outsider Howard Dean’s struggling campaign and was responsible for pulling Dean ahead of the other Democrat candidates – until he crashed. Trippi’s book is a unique insider’s view of how the internet, and specifically Web 2.0, works in conjunction with conventional politics, and more broadly with democracy (not the same thing). The fact that the French are currently experimenting with the same mix of new technology, staid self-interested politicians and grass-roots dissatisfaction makes the book entirely pertinent.

Be warned: Trippi’s is an all-out, all-American view: “Politics and high tech have always sprung from the same well – a balls-out desire for progress, the idea that the greatest force for political and social change in America has always been the ingenuity and creativity of its people.”

“A balls-out desire for progress” may not be the first phrase that jumps to mind when describing French politics, but despite their differences (funding for example) there are enough similarities to make the book well worth reading on this side of the Atlantic. In both presidential republics there is that uneasy mix of naïve, utopic belief in democracy which has been ground down relatively recently into disenchantment by the relentless self-aggrandisement and cynical self-enrichment of so many politicians.

In both countries also, conventional politicians have leant too heavily on television: “in the last half of the twentieth century, television staged a hostile takeover of American culture, in just twenty years going from reflecting American life to altering American life, to dictating nearly every aspect of American life: the products we buy, the clothes we wear, the things we fear….TV is a passive, top-down medium. Sitting around watching television inspires nothing but more sitting around and watching television.” Not just in America.

By contrast, the Internet is an active medium and, as Trippi, who was geeking with the best of them back in the early 1990’s, realised, the Internet creates inter-active communities: Google in the old days, e-bay, Wikipedia all bring people who don’t know each other together for a particular event. That’s what Trippi did with Howard Dean’s campaign, creating a community of over half a million people who cared passionately about Howard Dean. But the parameters have changed, this new community is not a flock of mindless people blindly following, and their leader is not what he thought he was: Trippi quotes Joi Ito, another person who understands this new world: “You’re not a leader you’re a place. You’re like a park or a garden. If it’s comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not about Dean. It’s about us.”

“Tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I’ll vote for you.” Benjamin Franklin’s theory of getting people on your side, up-dated. When the Dean team dried up on ideas, Trippi would put the problem to the blog sites and within hours solutions would be flooding in. Open source campaigning. When they needed funding, it was the the bloggers who came up with the idea of sending in $10 each. When you have around 600,000 bloggers that brings in more than fund-raising dinners with tickets at $2,000 a piece, but almost more important you’ve touched that mass of people who want to help and can afford $10 but not $20. It’s similar to what Ségolène Royal started out doing last year, when she also was a rank outsider, with her participative on-line book. But she (or her campaign manager) didn’t have the courage to continue. So though people backed her, she did not follow through. They were not involved enough. Trippi’s experience is that you have to let the people take over, all those people you don’t know, you have to trust them. But that is hard, especially for a top-down trained French administrator.

What killed the Howard Dean internet campaign was Howard Dean: he didn’t really understand why all these people were mobilised for him. Despite the money it brought him, he didn’t understand the influence of the internet. In Trippi’s phrase “he didn’t get it”. I think the same can be said of the candidates in this French election: none of them really believes. Which is understandable, if foolishly short-sighted (but when were politicians anything else?). Very few years ago if I had written that a search-engine called Google, or a funny write-your-own encyclopedia could all become integrated in our lives, who would have believed? Or that you would soon be quite OK about throwing your money electronically at a private individual you’ve never met in return for a lawn-mower, or a bike or archery set you’ve never seen. Or that just by creating a simple free download a 19 year-old could and would destroy the enormous omni-powerful music empires. Even the people behind them didn’t realize how fast their brain-children would grow nor how far they would penetrate. “It’s 1956 again and we just got the box in the house,” says Trippi. Nobody back then could imagine, as my father made a ridiculous mule-shaped puppet called Muffin jerkily prance about on the tiny pebble-thick screen in the corner of a few hundred homes, that in 12 years John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon would be using the same box but now in millions of homes to debate politics. And by that debate, inspire a generation.

A CSA opinion poll published this morning says that the majority of French people asked do not want either José Bové or Jean-Marie Le Pen to get the 500 signatures necessary to become official candidates (for an explanation of this somewhat obscure system, take a look at the December 2006 France Profonde and/or Tomás Ruta’s comment and my reply to Le Pen Rising: Tomás Ruta has a very good and much praised blog on Europe). However, in the same poll a majority does want the Greens Dominique Voynet and Corinne Lepage, as well as the Trotskyist Olivier Besancenot to get their quota of signatures.

This is hard to interpret: clearly the extreme left is OK (Besancenot) as are the Greens - yet Bové, who is both extreme left and green, is a far more popular and emblematic figure. So is it that the shadow of the 2002 elections still hangs over France? Is the electorate terrified that as in 2002 too many candidates will dilute the first-round vote? But in that case why allow the meat and two veg, sorry the Trotskyist and 2 Greens? If people wanted fewer candidates, Bové is the obvious amalgam of those three: better, surely, to get rid of them and keep him. Perhaps the feeling is that Bové, like the ultra-popular Green TV presenter Nicolas Hulot, should not sully himself with politics?

The idea that the French are still in shock after the 2002 election is supported by the finding that 55% of those asked don’t want Le Pen to get his signatures. That seems to me unfair. Like it or not there are a good many French people who vote Le Pen: this year, under the influence of his daughter Marine, his policies are aimed at reaching a broader public, fewer of them are the extreme ones of yesteryear and more are thought provoking. And surely it’s better anyway to let those who vote Le Pen fully express themselves that way, rather than pretending they don’t exist and creating a deep resentment which will only be expressed in another.

This afternoon José Bové’s four-month prison sentence was upheld by the Cour de cassation, France’s main appeal court. How he serves his sentence will be decided soon - since it is recognised that a four month prison sentence could interfere somewhat with his presidential campaign (the first poll is in 10½ weeks), although he will get huge groundswell support. Or the judge could decide to wait till after the elections. If elected president he could of course give himself an amnesty. Instead of going to prison he could be ordered to wear an electronic bracelet. “Pas acceptable!” he cried on TV. “When one is sent to prison for one’s ideas, does one try to negotiate?” One doesn’t know. Clearly the martyr mood is on him again. The original sentence was for destroying a field of GM maize in July 2004.

Will this work? Last night, five days away from finally unveiling her presidential policies, Ségolène Royal makes a major speech in front of some 5,000 supporters in Paris , with a string of PS elephants sitting on the front row. The woman who has made so much of participative democracy, who has used the web to open up discussions with a wide public, launches straight into: “The French people want a choice based on a clear cleavage. I have decided to take on this cleavage, for it opposes two conceptions of society, two ways of governing, two visions of France.” France split in two again, pitting one person against another, oh dear: “France is not the synthesis of the Ancien Régime and the Revolution….It is the clean break made by the Revolution which explains today’s France…” Does she believe that? She has only to look at her principal rival’s chief adviser to know that’s not true: François Bayrou’s long-time adviser is a certain Charles de Courson, who comes from one of France’s oldest families, a brilliant enarque but set against elites of any sort, whether ancien régime-based or ENA-made: he epitomises the best of the old and the new. But Madame Royal wants to see what is not there, a clean break. More ideological conflict when ideologies no longer work. And she then procedes to make a traditional left-wing speech, going into the history of the left, quoting all the 19th and early 20th century greats as if society had remained static all that time. Looking at the future through the eyes of history. It is a peculiarly French habit: very often, interviewing someone about why they think such-and-such or adopt a particular policy, they begin their answer by saying “The way to understand this problem [anything from immigration to the internet] is to go back to Robespierre’ speech on the 19th May…….”

But the problem of France’s clivage is more pressing. Many of us had hoped that by listening to a wider public the socialist candidate would broaden her own policies to admit the multi-faceted nature of today’s problems and appeal to the people of France, rather than just to the committed left. It’s the complexities of today’s society she should “take on”, not its cleavage. But no. She has decided to make the inter-party fight her campaign, not the future of France. I imagine Sarko’s boys are rubbing their hands with glee, for in a straight fight against their implacable machine Royal has very little chance. Her better hope was to engage people right across the spectrum - since there are many on the right who are wary of Sarko. Blair’s third way, to mention the unmentionable. But no. Left versus right, punch for punch and large numbers of voters switch off, cynical and disillusioned.

Where is it all going? Those who like to see patterns in history point excitedly to the 1995 campaign: at this stage in that election, with 4 or 5 weeks full campaigning behind them and 11 left to go, there were two candidates way out front and a third man languishing with an apparently hopeless 11-12%. Just like now! Ségolène and Sarko dominate the field and Bayrou, trails with a worthy but impossible 11%. Now look, say the history-watchers: in 1995 the two unassailable leaders were Jospin and Balladur, the third man was poor unloved Jacques Chirac. But he went on to win!

François Bayrou may pull off the same feat, but if he does it won’t be because of history. History does not repeat itself, journalists do.

The cause of this speculation is that indeed M. Bayrou is surging forward, gaining 4 points in a fortnight. Last week when he turned up to address 300 people in Aix he found 1,000 crammed into adjoining rooms. This is taken as the long-awaited sign, now is the time, cry the pundits, that irreversible things happen: we are on the cusp….. well, maybe.

As I read it, France has a large, perhaps huge, as yet uncounted number of people who are dissatisfied and disillusioned with not just the main candidates, but the whole existing political set-up, elitist, Paris-based. They are an electorate in search of a candidate, just as two years ago there was a huge number of people searching for someone who could express what they felt about the European Constitution. Then, they found their voice, it came from the Internet, Etienne Chouard posting his views, taken up literally by millions. Again, history does not repeat itself. I don’t think that will happen this time, or not in the same way, but there is that similar groundswell of intelligent, educated but dissatisfied people searching, waiting. The far left, whose anti-Europe stand in the referendum served them well, have not this time captured the imagination. I don’t honestly think enough people really believe in them. Bové might, Le Pen might – his campaign is aimed at working on that disappointment. This time he is more moderate, and the persistence of his message, unchanged for 30 years, is seen by some as a sign of reliability and sincerity in the face of the constantly pirouetting Chirac and his pupil Sarkozy.

The key question now is, can Bayrou get the better of Bové and Le Pen? In a sense Sarko and Ségo are irrelevant: with 11 weeks still to run, already they cease to surprise. Last night I switched off the “Sarko meets the people” TV discussion after 15 minutes, it was so utterly predictable. No, the interest is which of the poor relations, Bové, Le Pen or Bayrou, can seize the moment and do what Chirac did in ‘95 and Le Pen did in 2002: come up from behind and get through to the 2^nd round.

Probably only Bayrou, because he’s the only one who would have a chance of winning the 2^nd round. Protest votes make you feel good for a day, but in the end this whole exercise is about choosing a president for five years. Bayrou’s approach to campaigning is different: while Sarkozy organises giant media-orientated circuses from which most people are excluded, and Royal organises vociferous participative forums in vast halls, Bayrou simply walks the streets, often more or less alone. He talks to people. And he sticks to the provinces.

He says there is a genuine desire for what he proposes: a government of national union, formed with some from the left and some from the right (which could be seen as dangerously perpetuating the worst of the old system. But he has little choice, not having enough parliamentarians in his own party – a major credibility problem as well for Le Pen and Bové). He will write a 6^th constitution, giving parliament more power.

But going back to those who predict the future by examining history: in the 2002 campaign at this stage there were two candidates in the same position as Le Pen and Bayrou now – with around 13% each. In 2002 the two candidates were Le Pen and Jean-Pierre Chevenement. In the end Le Pen went forward to the second round and Chevenement collapsed to 5%. The future is not yet written.

An interesting article in the citizens’ newspaper, AgoraVox reacting to Nicolas Sarkozy’s Call from London. It’s written by a French chap, Stephane Rossard, who lives in Cape Town.
“Sarkozy says to us “Come back”: we say “Do something!”
There is of course a basic difference between the Brits who have moved to France and the French who have moved out. Whatever their individual reasons, most of the British taking up residence in France tend to be in the second half of their careers, often well into it, whereas the majority of French women and men who leave France are just beginning theirs. Another basic difference, which Stephane Rossard’s article unconsciously highlights, is that at some moment, fairly early on, I had to decide whether my principal residence was in France or in Britain. As soon as I ticked the former, I lost the right to vote in Britain (even though I still had a flat in London): my two expatriate French step-sons can still vote for a French president even though they have been living outside France for several years – as I guess M. Rossard and others can. Until I take French nationality, I am voteless (so this blog dedicated to the French elections is rather like a sex-manual written by a eunuch - no, that’s not true! I have vague memories of what it’s like inside a polling booth).
Back to M. Rossard (whose text I am ruthlessly pillaging, with sentences taken out of order (apologies), to keep brief, but if your French is OK, read the article): “The number of French leaving the country has risen by 40% in 10 years…..Some of course go to the UK, but many go elsewhere……It is one of the biggest waves of emigration France has ever known….This is a reality minimised by French politicians, either brushed off as irrelevant or ignored. It’s about time a candidate took an interest in us.
“However, calling on us to come back is not enough: French people abroad will judge on the evidence whether it’s worthwhile coming back or not. The future president is going to have to prove himself to convince us. For we are scalded cats. We know all about promises. It’s because in the past they were not kept that we left, and most of us have only a lukewarm desire to return unless there is a strong signal or something done.”
A theme I hear more and more from the current campaign and which I shall probably start repeating in different ways is: despite what they say, the principal candidates are completely out of touch with most of their compatriots.
Finally M. Rossard gives the address of a web-site dedicated to ex-patriot French people: http://francaisdumonde.canalblog.com/

The two candidates who could have breathed a fresh spirit into this election, breaking it from the grip of professional politicians and pushing it towards a different form of democracy, have both disappointed. Nicolas Hulot, because he decided in the end not to stand, believing he can be of more use as a green goad, and José Bové because in the end he did decide to stand.

Like many media-made icons, in himself José Bové may have less real substance than he is credited for, it’s just that he has that about him which absorbs our dreams and reflects them back to us. We invest him with what we want to see. He may share that gift with Ségolène Royal – and perhaps the American Democrat, Howard Dean, in the last American presidential election. But anyone who has that quality and is compelled to reveal what they really stand for, as a presidential candidate must, can only disappoint.

Many thought that if he ran, Bové would be, like Nicolas Hulot, a genuine independent. A man who comes from the people and is prepared to go to prison for his ideas, blessed with a sense of anarchy, fun and a sincere desire to help the unrepresented. He is a paysan, who hold a powerful place in French sentiment, working the earth, that eternal (unfortunately now much-polluted) source of wisdom, and in Bové’s case a particular kind of earth, the Larzac plateau, harsh, unforgiving desert – “crossing the desert” is what every great Frenchman has had to do.

However, many who had hopes of this one were deeply disappointed by his first policy speech on Thursday. He launched straight into a piece of ancient dogma dragged from soviet text-books: “A big boss earns 300 times the minimum wage.” The vocabulary, the sweeping generalisation, it’s so…well, as George W. would say “It’s a shame the French don’t have a word for passé”. Playing on envy and our own greed, it brings the debate down to the base level of money before it’s even started. 300 times the minimum wage is a little over 4.5 million euro a year. Undoubtedly a handful do earn that, for a short time, but I would guess most of the men and women who run ordinary companies do not take home much more than the average lawyer or surgeon. And sometimes much less.

What were Bové’s concrete proposals? “Un plan d’urgence sociale”. The intention is good, but plans? More of the old top-down, soviet-speak. “Imposing strict regulations about making anyone redundant”. If M. Bové is honest with himself, he is the last person to want anyone else to “impose regulations” on him, why is his priority to impose them on others? Because, he says: “we need to fight financial speculation and counter-act the power of the shareholder.” In the next paragraph “We have to attack the all-powerful multinationals and the financial markets.” And later “With the countries of the South, we will end the major institutions’ capacity to do harm (the World Bank, IMF, WTO), institutions which reinforce inequality and provoke the suffering which results in war.”

And many hoped for something imaginative, a bit creative even, a new way of looking at democracy. Certainly Bové says “I am not the candidate of a party. I am not a professional politician….we want to be the porte-voix des sans-voix”, an elegant phrase, voix meaning both voice and vote: he wants to bring a voice and a vote to those who have neither. Excellent. But why all the tired old mumbo-jumbo? The far left already has three candidates (Marie-George Buffet of the communists, Olivier Besançenot of the Trotskyist LCR (whose opening salvo at the beginning of the 2002 presidential campaign, when he was 28, was far more inspired: “Our lives are worth more than their profits”) and Arlette Laguiller of Force Ouvrière), all of whom are in the doldrums at the moment. If he wants to do well he has to break clear of them, not swell their ranks.

To reply to Wint Discontent’s comment about Bové’s destruction of the Millau MacDo: that gesture, romantic, visceral, unfortunately back-fired, as grand gestures often do. As Wint Discontent says, it seared the popular imagination, is remembered still. Indeed so well remembered that the MacDonald’s in question, which I drive past often, is one of the busiest and most profitable in France (the country alleged to have the highest consumption of MacDo’s per capita in Europe). After the new viaduct, it is Millau’s second-most visited tourist attraction. Bové did MacDonald, fast food (and bad health) a huge and lasting service that day!

On Wednesday, Nicolas Sarkozy was in London, drumming up support amongst the French ex-pats. I knew a couple of friends were going, so I asked them to send in their impressions. I was surprised nothing came in yesterday, the day after the event, then this morning this came from Tom Freke, a financial journalist:

Sorry for the delay … the reason for it is that I couldn’t get into the event on Tuesday and have been waiting to hear if a friend of mine did and I could get something from them. I have just found out they didn’t either, but thought they knew someone who had……

There was a huge mass of people outside at 6.30, when it was meant to start, but the people that were allowed in had already been let in. The crowd was left there, people thought, either for the TV cameras or because they didn’t understand the form of English shouted by the police …
“We are frogs not sardines” shouted one indignant woman, on being squeezed in.

Looking at the mess of people standing outside the venue, someone said “You can tell the people aren’t English, where’s the queue?”

Here is another comment from someone I do not know, but who was clearly trying to get a peek at the great man….

I was in that scrum too. I got within 20 people of getting in but they shut the doors and then said not one word. The local UMP deliberately over-invited in my view (a) to avoid the embarrassment of a half-empty room and (b) assuming that didn’t happen, to show crowds of young people gagging to see the great man. On the other hand, it was a good speech as you can see on the video/international page at www.sarkozy.fr. 

Yesterday Chris Maddock asked me the following question, referring to a blog I had written on the 12th January entitled “Chirac’s Endgame?”

“Is this piece in today’s New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/world/europe/01france.html?th&emc=th

relevant and how seriously it should be taken?”

Because I think it merits more than a few lines of comment from me in reply, I’ve decided to do today’s blog on it.

Certainly the piece in the New York Times is relevant. Less, I think, for the content of the interview, which is somehow so grotesque it is hard to take very seriously, than for the different ways the interview has been handled by the American and French press. The Elysée has so far issued two statements, the first is more interesting: Chirac’s people go straight into an attack on the newspapers for publishing the “off-the-record” remarks, particularly since they were rectified later. They claim the manner in which the remarks were reported is “shameful”, a deliberate attempt to “let loose a shameful debate on a subject where France’s commitment has always been constant and determined. It does not surprise us,” the statement continues, “on the part of certain media on the other side of the Atlantic which seizes any opportunity where France is concerned.” Perhaps seeing that this did not raise a flicker of anti-American braying from their compatriots, the Elysée issued a second statement, this time trying to rectify the damage done by Chirac’s first interview.

Staying on the French side of the Atlantic, both the Nouvel Observateur, one of the parties to the interviews, and Le Monde in its editorial this morning, comment only on the content. Le Monde takes at face value Chirac’s first interview statements about Israel being Iran’s target and Tehran being “razed before any missile has gone more than 200 metres”. Le Monde agonises over whether this is a change of direction in French foreign policy, wondering how can this be since it flies in the face of what Chirac has said before etc. It assumes that everything the president said, even in the first interview, is gospel. Certainly if you take that view and you haven’t read the New York Times’ version, the interviews are confusing.

The strength of the NYT piece is that it sets the controversial remarks in their context:

“The purpose of the initial interview was for Mr. Chirac to talk about climate change…..In the first interview, which took place in the late morning, he appeared distracted at times, grasping for names and dates and relying on advisers to fill in the blanks. His hands shook slightly. When he spoke about climate change, he read from prepared talking points printed in large letters and highlighted in yellow and pink.”

None of this is mentioned in the French press. They may consider it demeaning to talk of their president in these terms, but it is a far better and more compassionate explanation.

“Mr. Chirac,” the NYT goes one, “who is 74 and months away from ending his second term as president, suffered a neurological episode in 2005 and is said by French officials to have become much less precise in conversation…… In the midst of his initial remarks on Iran, Mr. Chirac’s spokesman passed him a handwritten note, which Mr. Chirac read aloud. “Yes, he’s telling me that we have to go back to the environment,” Mr. Chirac said. He then continued a discussion of Shiite Muslims……..

“On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists back to Élysée Palace to retract many of his remarks.

“The president had a different demeanour during the two encounters………. in the second, which came just after lunch, he appeared both confident and comfortable with the subject matter.

“Mr. Chirac said repeatedly during the second interview that he had spoken casually and quickly the day before because he believed he had been talking about Iran off the record.

“ “I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record,” he said……Mr. Chirac spent much of the second interview refining his remarks of the previous day.” The NYT quotes the various comments from the first interview which he retracted in the second.

“It was unclear whether Mr. Chirac’s initial remarks reflected what he truly believes,” says the American newspaper. “In fact, Élysée Palace prepared a heavily edited 19-page transcript of the Monday interview that excluded Mr. Chirac’s assessment of a nuclear-armed Iran.

“The transcript even inserted a line that Mr. Chirac had not said that read, “I do not see what type of scenario could justify Iran’s recourse to an atomic bomb.”

Finally the New York Times says: “The attempt by Élysée Palace to change the president’s remarks in a formal text is not unusual. It is a long-held tradition in French journalism for interview subjects — from the president to business and cultural figures — to be given the opportunity to edit the texts of question-and-answer interviews before publication.”

Anyone reading the NYT piece can see that the man was ill, or distracted, unless of course I am being naively duped and the NYT’s journalist is interpreting the moment very creatively. If so, I am not aware her version has been contradicted by either of the other two journalists present. In this particular interview those details are crucial and cast an entirely different light on the words spoken.

Le Monde this morning does not try to duck the issue, it compares the text of the two interviews, so the differences can be plainly seen, and M. Chirac’s retractions are fully expressed as such. Le Nouvel Observateur publishes verbatim extracts of the two interviews, but the first, the contentious one, is restricted to two answers from what was clearly something much longer. In the “verbatim” account of the second interview there’s a touchingly naive moment when we read; “end of the 1^st side of the Nouvel Observateur’s cassette”. Even when interviewing the head of state, the Nouvel Obs’ journalist can’t run to digital. But despite all this, the article in the Nouvel Obs omits all the details given by the NYT, for example the journalist does not mention the 19 page re-edited transcript of the interview, nor refer to Chirac’s dependence on spokesmen.

It would be interesting to know whether the French weekly magazine would have published the controversial comments at all had it been alone in the venture. Knowing the two American papers were going to tell all, the French editor had no choice.

This mini-event is interesting in that it highlights the two different approaches to journalism. Many people have said that French journalists are too meek before their mighty elite: the various income tax allowances and hefty state subsidies are invoked as part of the reason for this, or the notorious pensée unique, meaning in effect that editors and those in power are in cahoots. It’s not entirely true, there are some very good investigative journalists in France, and some, admittedly independent like Denis Robert, are extremely courageous. What French editors don’t seem to have grasped is that their readers are mostly intelligent, perceptive adults, getting their information from all sorts of sources, some reliable, some less so. You can no longer get away with half-truths. If you know that the person you are interviewing is in some way indisposed, or even is simply being fed notes from advisers, giving the impression that the person has no opinion of his/her own, it’s irresponsible not to say so. Because someone else will.

But to answer Chris Maddock’s question: I think it puts Chirac’s endgame in tatters.

It was supposed to be one of those ennobling moments – uniting us all in the fight to save our environment from the relentless onslaught of our own worst selves. Instead, it left me with a feeling of ridicule, watching those hoping for power play-acting a senseless charade.

Nicolas Hulot, a very popular television presenter and committed ecologist who announced on Monday that he is not, after all, running for presidency, had persuaded ten of the principal candidates to endorse publicly his Charter for the Environment. All of them, and more, have already signed the charter, but that was not deemed enough by M. Hulot, who sees his role now as an outside, non-involved pressure, a thorn, if you like, on all in the cause of the environment. So yesterday, at the new Musée du quai Branly, brain-child of Jacques Chirac and known colloquially as the museum of primitive arts, ten candidates agreed to come and publicly swear allegiance, bend the knee to the Great Green God. A sort of re-run of Runnymede in 1215, when King John was obliged by his barons to sign their Charter, known as Magna.

Hulot’s charter is perfectly reasonable. It consists simply of ten aims and five propositions. The aims include: making industrial products which either last longer, can be repaired easily or at least re-cycled; reducing our reliance on coal, gas and oil; re-thinking transport to decrease road-traffic. There has to be a limit to urban sprawl, so that green spaces are preserved; a tax on things that harm the environment. Agriculture must be re-orientated, respecting “le travail paysan”; in health-care the charter aims to concentrate on prevention rather than curing problems once present; research must be for sustainable projects. Finally, in its international policies France must give priority to the fight against further and increasing environmental damage.

None of it is revolutionary, some of the aims may be questionable but on the whole they are worthy. The five propositions are similarly well-intentioned, a deputy prime minister in charge of sustainable development, for example. So why do I feel yesterday’s exercise ridiculous?

It was the very concept of a public ceremony. There’s nothing wrong with getting someone who’s likely to become the world’s most powerful president to commit in public to an environmental charter, and obviously anything to do with elections will be done in the full glare of the press. The mistake, for me, especially since the host was the telegenic Hulot, was to stage it like a superficial chat-show, with each guest wheeled-on, slotted a certain number of sound-bytes to promote his or her latest product while the beaming host nods approvingly, then wheeled off to make room for the next guest, who is received with audience applause which wipes from the memory what the last person has just said. Rather like the radio and television news which put numbers of dead in Iraq in the same breath as the number of goals scored by a football club. It trivialises. We all know that nine out of the ten candidates will never have to put their commitment to the test – for them it is pure show and a waste of everybody’s time. We all know that the one person finally elected will adopt only those measures which he or she finds politically expedient at the time. Like a television chat-show, all it does is promote the ever-smiling host.

Except that this one failed in the most important part. Hulot’s wish, apparently, was that all ten candidates should be photographed together – forget our differences, solidarity in the face of the global warming. A rousing company sing-song as finale, so we all leave feeling better. But for his image-conscious guests, that was too much. Royal, first on, was not going to be photographed next to Sarkozy, last on. Everything was carefully orchestrated – not by Hulot but by the candidates. Like any other chat-show host, he was being used, the tail wagging the dog. Which just made it seem even more ridiculous.