The campaign enters its third and final phase. All the candidates are declared, they have all expressed their policies. They each know their rivals’ strengths and weaknesses, now it is a matter of convincing us that they are better than the others. A study showed recently that only 35% of the electorate are die-hard partisans of one party or the other, sure of voting the same way they have always voted. They rest wait to be convinced.

What is strange, for an outsider, is to see the political fragility behind all but the UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy. This election is about voting for an individual not a party, but the political mess behind two of the principal candidates makes people wonder whether and how they will be able to govern. Take Segolene Royal, for example, the Socialist candidate: you only have to watch the leader of her Party, Francois Hollande, to realize that all is not well. He travels about the country addressing crowds, but nobody much takes any notice, wondering why: they don’t want him, they want to see the candidate, they want to touch the hem of her skirt as she passes, or be touched by her in some way. The leader of the Socialist Party is seen and treated as an irrelevance in this election.Francois Hollande is in a doubly odd position in that he is the father of Segolene Royal’s children and her party’s leader, yet there appears to be no rapport between Royal and Hollande at either level. They live separately, a very knowledgeable MP I talked to at length on Friday continually referred to Royal as Hollande’s ex, yet in the book she publishes this morning she tries to scotch that rumour by waxing lyrical about her love for Hollande and how much he supports her. But she doesn’t convince: “I realize that the situation is unusual,” she says, ”and I understand that it makes people curious. But outside the fact that it is my private life [which the French press does not talk about] I can, even so, tell you one thing: I find my children absolutely amazing. They support me, each one in his or her own way. Francois too.” A sort of appendage to her domestic thought as he appears to be in her political. But it’s very important, for how will she run the country if she has in two senses broken with the party leader, who is, one assumes, the party’s figure-head and principal policy chief. It is no secret that Hollande is far closer to the party elephants than Royal, yet to form a government she must rely on them. There was a much-publicized moment a week or two back when she went back to them, but they did nothing for her ratings so she moved away again, trying to recreate the excitement she generated last year. Voters are human beings, most have had to cope with relationship problems, work problems, they project their worries on to the candidates and ask perfectly normal questions such as Can it work? They also know that, under the 5th Constitution, the president of France is one of the most powerful positions in the world, the candidate has to be 100% convincing.
Francois Bayrou in the centre is the other candidate who fails to convince partly because of the political uncertainty behind him. Like Royal, what he stands for is perfectly fine, interesting and in its own way workable. But what about the rest? He at least is the head of his party, but he has a only a handful of MP’s. He needs 290 to have the slimmest majority in parliament. He talks blithely of working with the best on the left and the best on the right, cynically assuming that today’s rivals will drop their life-time allegiances in order to have a piece of power. He’s a clever man and he knows his colleagues, so he is probably right, they will, but it says little for them if the offer of a ministry will make them change their convictions. Will the public believe them in their new role? And how long will their conversion last? The point is, Bayrou has four weeks to convince us all that it’s possible. He really has to sell that as a water-tight workable proposition. Knowing how volatile and Machiavellian many French politicians are (compared to their rather staid British and American counter-parts), I think many doubt his capacity to hold them together. He is an interesting man, with good ideas, probably better than his rivals’, but he is not a born leader – in many ways like Gordon Brown.
That leaves Sarkozy. He is the leader of his party, which is huge, well-financed and solidly behind his ideas. He has the backing (albeit tepid) of Chirac, which most of us would consider a curse rather than a blessing. But interestingly with Sarkozy, while the party’s policies are reasonable, many consider the man is not. He is divisive, he rules by division, he makes more enemies than friends, whom he uses only for what they can give while they can give it. The same MP I was talking to on Friday, who knows Sarkozy well and is not entirely against him, said that if he is elected the country will be on the rocks within two years. Sarkozy’s ideas are not his own, he takes them from anyone who seems interesting, which means that he changes them the next time he meets an interesting person. He thinks that leadership is rushing about at top speed, gesticulating, shouting. He is intensely disloyal – one only has to look at the man who guided him successfully to where he is now, Brice Hortefeu, who a month ago was put firmly in a cupboard to which only Sarko has the key. It is precisely this histrionic and unpleasant behavior amongst the entire political class which the French want to change. They want their politicians to deal with (which means cure) the problems facing France – its massive debt, simply paying the interest on which (40 billion euro a year) soaks up all income tax and costs more than the entire education budget; unemployment; pensions; immigration and its corollary, integration; globalization which terrifies the French but is a fact of life; religion, which to everyone’s surprise has become an issue after 100 years’ lying low. The list goes on and on, but the candidates have less than 4 weeks to address them. Many voters feel that in the last two and a half months they have not even started…..which means they may give up in disgust before voting day.

Ségolène Royal has seen the light; she is returning to the roots of her popularity, going back to the mass of French people who want something different. Last year she literally swept to victory in the Socialist Party primaries because she tapped into the grassroots. Virtually unknown in a party dominated by heavy-weights like Fabius, Strauss-Kahn, Lang and even the retired Jospin, she used the internet intelligently and built on her experiments in participative budgeting in the region of which she is president, the Poitou-Charentes. She promised a break with the past. Thousands joined the Socialist Party specifically so they could vote for her in the primaries, and with their help she crushed the party elephants, who had not minced their dislike, or disgust towards her “half-baked” policies. Then she seemed to flatten out. Worried, she felt she needed the rock of socialist support, so she went back to the same elephants who had rubbished her and whom she had soundly beaten. General consternation from those who thought they saw in her a breath of fresh air, not more of Mitterrand, whose sole lasting legacy, according to left-leaning editorialists on the tenth anniversary of his death, is that he became president. So far he is the only socialist president in 49 years of the 5th Republic.

So it is with great relief that Royal has begun declaring that she is a free woman, her ideas are her own, and she has started talking again about people’s juries, the internet and those policy elements which put her on the electoral map in the first place. However flakey they may seem, they at least correspond with what her supporters want. She is now talking once again about having a 6th Republic - Arnaud Montebourg’s idea. But in doing this she is walking away from the Party, who admit in the press they had no idea she was going to bring that issue back on to the agenda. This morning they are all starting the old carping. They have support in their criticism from the party’s former advisor on economic affairs, Eric Besson, who suddenly resigned in February because Royal was taking too many liberties, announcing policies which had not been discussed or even mentioned in the all-important committees. His book, Que Connait Madame Royal? is full of quietly administered vitriol, he gives succinct extracts in an interview with Le Monde . His principal criticism is that she is interested only in herself.

But far more interesting to outsiders like myself is this underlying desire amongst the French voter to break the established pattern. In itself their search for something new is not new. Since 1981 no government has been re-elected, in other words the electorate try something, find they don’t like it, and vote against next time. They chop and change, rejecting everything they know: in the first round of the last presidential election, Jacques Chirac, who they knew only too well, did not even get 20% of the vote - that means just 14% of French adults. Whereas the marginal candidats, lumped together, beat him with 29.64%.  But of course, they were not lumped together.

Is the underlying reason for this the pensée unique? The feeling that the people who govern France all say more or less the same thing? That is certainly Le Pen’s view, and to an extent Bayrou’s; It used to be Royal’s, and maybe she is coming back to it. The old chestnut that the leaders of France, both in government and in industry, left and right, have all been through the same, very narrow school, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. That certainly seems to explain Bayrou’s immediate rise in popularity when, last September, he started having a go at the French media for the way they don’t give air-time to anyone except their own. This popular desire for change, and at the same time to bust things open like the press and the elite, shows the revolutionary spirit is still alive in France. Ségolène Royal seems to have re-understood that, and quite rightly she is using the internet as the vehicle to build on that spirit of revolt. Those who doubt the influence of the web in the campaign can, as always, go to Thierry Crouzet’s blog. It is this element of the unknown, the ever present risk of something quite unexpected (April 2002, May 2005) which makes this election particularly fascinating to follow: it is an unfolding narrative without an author. We all know it will end, and quite soon, but no one can say quite how.

A new element in this election campaign is national identity. Suddenly these two words have sparked new controversy and therefore new life into the story. The phrase was pushed to the forefront of debate by Nicolas Sarkozy, who announced on television that if elected he would instigate a ministry of immigration and national identity. He had two reasons for doing this: firstly he has realised that recently people have stopped talking about him, he has just become part of the landscape. For any presidential candidate this is bad, for a man like Sarkozy who has a need to monopolise the conversation, it was a disaster. Instead, everyone was talking about François Bayrou. Bayrou is pushing up between Royal and Sarkozy, taking the middle ground, so Sarko felt obliged to move further right, to poach Le Pen’s extreme right voters. Hence a ministry of immigration and national identity. 

A growing number of Le Pen’s voters are not hard-core militants at all, but former members of the Communist party, plus rurals disappointed by Chirac’s Gaullism and finally what the French call ni—ni-istes, that is, those dissatisfied with recent governments of both left and right. Sarkozy believes he can woo these floating voters back to him. But of course the further right he moves to attract them, the more he offends those in the centre, who flake off to Bayrou. In theory – because in fact many of those saying they are going to vote Bayrou have not made up their minds. When the voice on the end of the phone asks them who they’ll vote for, they think  it’s trendy to say Bayrou - indirectly it gets them into the news. They become one of those in the headlines – Bayrou’s secret army.
The words ‘national identity’ may seem anodyne to some, but not to the French. Like Royal’s favourite phrase ‘l’ordre juste’, it turns many French people apoplectic. Both are seen as staples of the right or far right. It is a very odd thing, to an outsider. Say the word ‘nation’ to a socialist and it’s like stroking a cat, they love it; say the word ‘national’ and they bridle like a horse; say the word ‘nationalist’ and they’re out on the street waving banners and burning effigies. Such are the subtleties of the French language and the pitfalls of being a foreigner. The nation is the key to republican thought (good); someone who believes in his own nation is the epitome of the far right (bad). I am told that national preference, one of Le Pen’s disputed policies, actually became law in 1932, a socialist measure put on the statute book by Roger Salengros, but I cannot find any confirmation of that.

But what about simply ‘national identity’? What does it mean to be French? Are we talking about learning the history of the country, the structure of its government, the function of its courts? Is it sufficient just to sit an exam to be French? Again, it depends who you talk to - and comments from French readers of this blog would be most welcome. According to Marine Le Pen, daughter of the veteran leader of the Front National but by no means merely his echo, it is a feeling, deep within, and like love (she added with a sparkle in her eyes) you know when you are affected by it, although you cannot necessarily define it. It is not about learning French history at school, it’s about sharing a common history, a common future and, for her very important, a common language. For her father it goes further (or farther):”I think a foreigner who wants to adopt French nationality begins to become truly French only when the bones of his parents dissolve into the earth of France,” he told me last week. “It’s at that moment that one begins to belong to the nation charnellement.”(A word for which I can’t find a quick equivalent – carnally doesn’t work, though it can do in other circumstances, viscerally, perhaps, intimately not really). Jean-Marie Le Pen talks in images, which I have to say makes talking to him vivid, alive and sometimes very funny. Having perhaps tested out his ideas on me, he spoke at length yesterday in the house where he was born in Brittany about what it is to be French and why it is important. He said the electorate should know where the candidates come from, where their roots are. This is clearly provocation to Sarkozy (Hungarian father, Jewish maternal grandfather, he himself brought up in a smart suburb of Paris) and Royal (born in Senegal, Africa).

If a week is a long time in politics, ten days is an eternity. I have been rushing round France interviewing Marine Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie, then writing about the Front National for Prospect Magazine, at the same time setting up a documentary film about the role of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, France’s post-graduate school for high-flying administrators. Something had to wait, and it was the blog. I shall return to both these subjects at a later stage, but first try to get back into the election.

A milestone in the campaign has just passed: the 16th March, the day when each candidate had to present his or her 500 signatures to the Conseil Constitutionel. For the minor, independent candidates it is of course an important day, but for most of us it is a totally trivial event - simply because it is such a strange and in many ways unnecessary ritual, over-blown by the press. Most candidates, major and minor, have already been campaigning hard for two and a half months, one has sold his flat to raise funds for his campaign, all have invested enormous time, energy and naturally money. Then, as from today, some 35 candidates are told they have wasted their time, energy and money - and our time too – they must pack up their campaign stall with nothing to show for their effort.

The idea of getting 500 elected representatives to endorse a candidate is to prevent loonies standing for president. But why shouldn’t a loony stand if he or she wants to? Oh, because it dilutes the vote – instead of voting for sensible candidates, people will vote for loonies. Ummm – what? That says something very strange indeed about either how the elite see their compatriots (“they are so stupid they can’t tell the difference between a loony and me!”) or the quality of the serious candidates. The British parliamentary elections have, over the past 40 or so years, had candidates for totally impossible parties – such as Screaming Lord Sutch’s Monster Raving Loony Party. They attract a few votes, they lose their deposit and have no effect on the final result. In other words if an eccentric no-hoper is going to campaign for two and a half months, why not let him/her continue for just the remaining month and be done with it? Or prevent them standing at the outset.

Anyway, the day is past and we can get on with looking at the main candidates, who had no problem getting their signatures. François Bayrou has been climbing vertiginously close to Royal and even Sarkozy, but may have stalled. From the outset he has presented an intriguing programme, a Third Way in all but name. Both his main rivals have resorted to some pretty lousy tactics to discredit him. These are candidates who at the outset declared themselves to be a new species of politician, not wrapped-up in petty sniping and back-biting. But despite such good intentions, nothing much changes: the Socialist Party is, as always, riven by egos as their leaky ship lurches dangerously and threatens, like last time, to sink. Two of Ségolène Royal’s key advisors, Laurent Fabius and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, denounce each other in public, which bodes well for any government they might eventually form. Meanwhile Royal’s former economics advisor has published a book telling us what a self-centred, unappealing person the Socialist candidate is.

The UMP camp is little better: Sarkozy with much pomp brought on board the venerable Simone Veil, former minister of health way back in 1975 (again, this is the man who said he would break with the past). After a public show of hugs, kisses and mutual congratulation, Mme Veil has more recently attacked her new leader for proposing a ministry of immigration and national identity. It is well known that Sarkozy has a terrible temper, sometimes hurling furniture across his office at his luckless assistants, that sort of thing. Recent reports abound of his screaming at his staff, calling them all the names under the sun because he is slipping slightly in the opinion polls and Bayrou is closing in. Again it bodes well if he elected president: it also says a lot about a man (or woman) if he blames his staff for the fact that the public are losing faith in him.

Bayrou still provides the enigma of the election. Is his popularity going to last another 36 days? It’s far from certain. In the last presidential elections Jean-Pierre Chevènement had a similarly heady experience, rocketing in the opinion polls during the campaign, but thenflopped terribly at the actual vote. People notoriously give deliberately misleading answers to pollsters – it’s all part of the fun. Anyway, a third of the French electorate cannot take part in these polls because they don’t have telephones – and all these polls are done over the phone. People either no longer have a fixed-line phone, depending instead on their mobiles, or their fixed line is for the internet only. So that at least provides us with suspense until the last minute, for always, in the background, is Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in 2002 surprised/shocked everyone by beating the Socialists. There is no reason why he should not do the same again. I spent a very interesting hour with him in Strasbourg last week: he was charming, witty and seemed remarkably full of energy for a man of 78. His policies, well, they please some and listening to him it is not hard to understand why. They follow a certain logic which is either yours or isn’t. But more of that, and his daughter, another time.

Back briefly to the Salon d’Agriculture - where yesterday three candidates, led by the rings in their noses, were paraded in front of the placidly on-looking beasts. There was a moment of near-panic when one contender, Bayrou, hesitated, nostrils flaring, as he got wind of one of his rivals, Philippe De Villiers. How in that multitude of different and pungent smells Bayrou scented De Villiers and sensed he wanted to have a sniff of him is one of those mysteries of animal communication which we mere humans will never understand, but after a brief pawing of the ground, Bayrou turned and, tail-up, galloped away pulling his handlers after him. After that, when the mighty bull, Jean-Marie Le Pen, turned up, the organisers made sure that none of the other prize beasts come anywhere close - not difficult since the Salon is enormous, filling 8 huge exhibition halls. In 8 hours you have not seen it all.

In the three weeks since I wrote that François Bayrou had bravely denounced the Common Agricultural Policy because it “kills African farmers” two things have happened: Bayrou has climbed from 14% in the polls to 20%, and at the same time he has lost his nerve. The higher he climbs in the opinion polls, the more tepid his speeches have become. Three weeks ago he could afford to tell farmers the truth about the CAP, yesterday with victory now possible, every vote counts and he can no longer afford to offend anyone. Which means he can’t afford to tell the truth. Yesterday he jumped on the Chirac band-wagon, attacking Peter Mandelson in Brussels for wanting to tamper with agricultural subsidies as a preliminary to re-starting trade talks at the WTO. I wonder why these politicians go for the lesser man, instead of aiming their rhetoric at the boss of the WTO, who makes it clear on his web-site that he too sees agricultural trade barriers in Europe as a problem? Could it be because he’s a Frenchman, Pascal Lamy?

Philippe de Villiers, extreme right Movement for France, was even more explicit about the need for trade barriers: “Europe is falling apart,” he thundered. “Wheat from the Ukraine, plums from Chile, meat from the Argentine, wine from Australia. All products in which France excels, then Europe introduces competition…..”. It would be fascinating, during this election time, to have a French agriculture week - only French products in the shops, sold at a price that the farmers consider would bring them a fair income. Just so we could see what the prices are, and judge for ourselves whether we want to pay that, rather than having to rely on the figures and words provided by biased politicians.

Le Pen also wants to erect trade barriers, with a customs’ duty payable on all imports, food or otherwise. He sees that as the way to protect French products and raise money for the state. The Front National continues the trend started in the last presidential elections of picking up many voters from rural France, disllusioned not with the other candidates so much as the current batch of politicians who over 30 years have done so little to help the non-agricultural country people. Ségolène Royal also recognises that children in rural France are sometimes more disadvantaged than those living in the tower-block estates

On Monday I was sad to miss a different kind of agricultural salon, as my near neighbour José Bové held an open-day on his farm on the Larzac. Parisian journalists were shown a “typical agricultural dwelling” - an eco-friendly house Bové has had built from natural materials (wood, hemp etc) instead of the usual horribly unnatural stone, sand, lime and water. He treated them first to a press conference in his barn, everyone sitting on bales of hay, listening to the sheep munching, the grass growing and Bové talking, then to a meal of local produce. I would loved to have gone, sink a few organic beers and set the world to rights, chewing the cud or even crossing swords with the anti-globals, but could not, because Monday afternoon is when I teach English in the local primary school and that handful of underprivileged children take priority. As Mme Royal says, they need more help than anyone else in France, and are largely forgotten. Rumour has it that many anti-globals no longer have any confidence in M Bové, they feel he is going to get his 500 signatures. If that is true it will be a bad day for democracy and a bad day for this campaign. I’ll go up and console him over a few organic beers.

The scene shifts from the Salon d’Agriculture to Airbus - from pedigree pigs to pigs that fly - a wishful dream that Europe could sustain the development and manufacture of a major industrial project. Only a few months ago all the great and the good of Europe were on the tarmac at Toulouse to see the launch of the mega-plane, the A380. That particular day I was having a picnic with my family beside a local stream and long-abandonned 18th century mill, when this enormous beast came flying low over us, turning with the slow majesty of some massive sea mammal. Leaning my head against the mossy 18th century industrial ruin, I was impressed at man’s fathomless ingenuity, his unceasing quest for this and that and all the accompanying clichés. Today those same ingenious men are out on the street, demonstrating their despair while yesterday’s great and good bury their heads in the sand and it is tomorrow’s hopeful leaders, the candidates in this presidential campaign, who are flocking to Toulouse, each seeking to show that he or she is better equiped than their rivals to deal with the death-throes of European industry.

Jean-Marie Le Pen is quite clear: it is not the state’s responsablity to bail out Airbus. “Ah!”, cries the eager reporter, scoop at the ready, “So (heartlessly) you’d abandon Airbus….” Not at all, cut in Le Pen, I’d work hard to find private companies who want to invest or buy - the old admiration for Thatcher has not died. François Bayrou has the same line, less agressively stated. I wonder whether they will be quite so keen if (when) a wealthy industrialist from India or China says he is willing to buy. The blatantly racist comments from all major politicians when Lakshmi Mittal first announced he wanted to buy Arcelor are still echoing. As president of a Region, Ségolène Royal wants to involve the Regions, let them invest in Airbus. All her fellow-socialist regional presidents have said that’s just what they want too. Unfortunately their combined wealth seems to be about a tenth of the money required, though I am fully prepared to believe that’s a grossly unfair figure thrown up by the opposition. But nevertheless I’m not quite sure why I should have to pay even higher local tax to support an aeroplane that most other French people won’t have to pay for. And anyway, should we be supporting air travel? (and will I be asked?) - although of course A380 carries more people per load (assuming it flies full), so I suppose it pollutes proportionately less. Nicolas Sarkozy for his part immediately brought his Alstom trophy out of the cupboard. In 2004 he attracted great criticism (including from me in Prospect) for shoring up the ailing French engineering company with public money, justifying it by saying that “uniquely French engineering knowledge must not be allowed to fall into the hands of foreigners” (meaning in that context the Germans). Sarkozy fought and won that battle with Brussels and it is true that today, thanks to public money, Alstom is back on its feet. Today Sarkozy is busy reminding us all of his vision and wisdom as he now joins with Germany to find a way to stop Airbus (or part of it) falling into the hands of other, perhaps less savoury foreigners. But certainly the Airbus experience is showing us that Sarkozy is not a free-market man. When the going is good he will let his mates (like Arnaud Lagardère, principal private French shareholder in Airbus) ape American business, but when there’s a problem he’ll fall back on vote-catching dirigisme. However, more to the point, as Elie Cohen of Telos points out, both Royal and Sarkozy speak as though Airbus were a wholly nationalised French concern and the German partner does not exist

The press says there are some 4,300 jobs at risk in France (although presumably only if no one, Indian or otherwise, buys part of the company). Worth noting perhaps last year’s decision by the French car manufacturer Peugeot to close its plant in Britain, with the direct loss of 2,300 jobs and a further 5,000 jobs amongst ancillary suppliers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember a single French voice lifted in sympathetic protest at the time. 50 years of European union may have done wonders preventing wars, but it hasn’t done much for neighbourly solidarity.

For information in this confused scene: Airbus is managed (owned?) by EADS, the troubled Franco/German company. Lagardère (French) and Daimler-Chrysler (German) are the two private shareholders, each with a vote, in EADS, and therefore presumably a say in the running of Airbus. The French and German governments are investors in EADS but have no vote. Louis Gallois is the new boss of Airbus, he is also the French president of EADS, a position he shares with the German Thomas Enders. As far as I can see there is no German represented at the top of Airbus.

Despite dwindling numbers of farmers, the power of agriculture in France is still strong – as the annual Salon d’Agriculture in Paris, which opens today, shows. Yesterday was press day, and the Salon was the lead item on all media, they talked of little else. It’s an annual ritual that I suspect will become much less important if either Nicolas Sarkozy or Ségolène Royal is elected president. For two weeks, millions will flock by car, bus and train to France’s largest city to spend a couple of hours imagining they’re in the countryside. Needless to say, the pomp and fuss made of fancy bulls and pedigree pigs bears little relation to the real situation in rural France, which is disastrous. A survey in 2004 showed that half the people moving into rural France are below the official poverty line – which means they earn less than either 50 or 60% of the median wage-earner (the first figure is the French measure, the second the European). They cannot afford to live in towns, and in the country there is no work. The famous farmers so cosseted in this weekend’s press employ no one: in 30 years, farming has ceased to be a labour-intensive occupation and now, certainly round me, it is a purely family affair. European subsidies have enabled farmers to mechanise every part of the food-producing process, at the same time dig themselves deeply into debt since the subsidies are not 100%, whereas, in my view, those subsidies should be for paying wages beyond the family. Then of course the farm-equipment manufacturers would squeal – but since most have already moved their manufacturing outside France….. But no one wants to hear that: Sarkozy’s publicity director puts him on a poster against a backdrop of an idyllic French village – la France éternelle. 16 years ago, the same idea worked well for Mitterrand, and we all know France has not changed one iota since.
Jacques Chirac, who spent four hours at the Salon yesterday, is constantly referred to as the farmers’ friend, mainly because way back in 1976 when he was Minister of Agriculture he defended their rights tooth and claw against Britain and Brussels. It’s a trick he has repeated often since, each time to great applause: yesterday he did it again, lambasting that perfidious Brit, Peter Mendelson who only has to twitch his pen for all France to boo. But in between times the farmer’s friend has done strictly nothing to prevent rural decline – as if his annual visit to the Salon patting heads was enough to keep the peasants happy. But farmers are fed up that in this election campaign the candidates (and M. Chirac) waste their time banging on about the environment. Thus far they haven’t addressed real farming issues: money. That will change this week of course, as each candidate visits the Salon. The air will be thick with extravagant promises about defending the Common Agricultural Policy to their dying breath – more methane to add to that produced by the cows. The only candidates to talk honestly about subsidies, Bayrou and Bové, both practicing farmers, have pointed out that they distort trade and hurt, kill farmers in the developing world. And then Bové wonders why rural mayors are not endorsing him!

Farmers want to produce food to feed the masses, a virile, status-rich occupation, not receive a monthly cheque from a computer in Brussels for titivating a few hedgerows –for farmers are as much seduced by rural nostalgia as townies, and look back through rose-tinted spectacles at the time when all winter we ate nothing but the potatoes, Swedes or chestnuts (if we were lucky) grown in good French soil, and meat was a once a month luxury.

Two or three evenings a week I visit lonely farms to give the children extra English lessons. Nobody could claim that their parents are poor, but they far from well-off after working long and anti-social hours. They know their world is changing, if not disappearing, and their children had better adapt. The simple time-honoured expedient of inheriting the family farm will be much less attractive in ten years’ time.

Two figures: there are 1 million farmers active in France - and nearly 2 million retired. That merits reflection. Traditionally most rural mayors (those chaps so sought after for their endorsement by the “small” candidates) are retired farmers, they have kept local power leaning their way. But that too is changing, in my neighbouring village the mayor and ten of his councillors live and work far way, in large towns. They return to the village where they grew up most weekends, but inevitably their mindset is now urban. Similarly the vast majority of the millions who visit the Salon d’Agriculture will get in the car afterwards and drive to the nearest supermarket to buy (at best) a nice piece of shrink-wrapped (special offer) meat, vegetables ‘produced in the European Union’ and fruit from a long way away. At best. Even in France a growing number opt for the prepared meal, the frozen veg, the ready-to-eat pudding. The one piece of French produce they will buy is cheese – although increasingly in supermarkets that is industrial, as unpasteurised milk becomes proscribed by Brussels. That is the reality of agriculture – what it produces has to be cheap and safe and as far removed from the realities of farming as possible. A few years ago I was helping one of Bové’s neighbours on the Larzac plateau milk her sheep. As she worked, the sheep she was milking shat into the bucket of milk. Calmly she hoiked out the turd and carried on milking.

More statistics for those who believe in them: a poll published this morning shows that only 45% of those asked want to work longer to earn more. That flies in the face of Sarkozy’s premise that millions of working people are desperate to increase their income by working a few more hours per week, and so back his plan to loosen up France’s working laws. 53% want to have their current working week sanctified by law.

A development to my blog about the devious practices to which candidates, or their supporters, will resort in order to get the necessary 500 signatures from rural mayors, there’s a story in today’s Le Monde that one rural mayor sent back a cheque for 1,000€ sent to him by the Front National. A spokesman at the Front admitted his party sent cheques to rural mayors, not in return for a signature, no, no, no, but because the Front National understands that rural communes are short of cash for little extras - heating bills for the elderly, for example. A kind thought. Anyway, this particular mayor thought it was a bribe and sent it back. Now added suspicion and calumny will fall on all those mayors (their names will be published on the 20th of this month) who have endorsed the Front. Jean-Marie Le Pen claims to be short of about 100 signatures, with 2 weeks to go.

And another piece of daft polling. Great excitement this morning because a BVA poll showed that if François Bayrou makes it into the second round, he will win the election, whether his rival is Nicolas Sarkozy or Ségolène Royal. The polls say he would beat Sarko by 54% and Royal by 55%. The problem is the same poll says that he won’t make it into the second round - he’ll only get 17% in the first round, well below Royal at 25% and Sarkozy at 31%.

The more I look at the photos of François Bayrou which are flooding the net, the more he looks like what he is - an affable, intelligent farmer. He doesn’t have that crisp slickness of Chirac in the old days or of Sarkozy and Royal today, a quality many find attractive and for some reason equate with efficiency and international know-how. Bayrou’s more the Gordon Brown of the election: it would be interesting to run a proper comparison on the two men. Bayrou is said to be difficult to get on with, certainly several MP’s close to him have left him after stormy disagreements, though he has many firm colleagues, particularly among his advisors like Charles de Courson. Neither man has an immediate telegenic charm, though nowadays that lack may be more appreciated than being at ease with the media. Their policies may be close too, an indefinite mix of vaguely free-market economics and social conscience. Bayrou has bravely overcome a serious stutter, and the effort makes him appear a little slower with words, but that may be seen as greater sincerity? He also fits the tradition that every president of the 5th Republic has had roots in the coutryside. Up until now that has been very important, since many French families only moved out of rural France in the last 40 years and still have close attachments there. Indeed for the parliamentary elections many city-dwellers vote in the country commune of their parents or grandparents because they feel their choice carries greater weight there. Both Royal and Sarkozy have made country folk guffaw by the way they hold a baby pig (important) or pick their way gingerly through cow shit. In many ways the current race is between the French who have moved to the slick city and those who have not: speedy Sarkozy and the slower, thoughtful Bayrou. Tortoise and hare?

“There are three kinds of lies,” according to that arch-politician Benjamin Disraeli: “lies, damned lies and statistics,” and an election campaign is the ideal time to see the last kind being hurled about as if they were the new gospel. Jacques Marseille, an economist who has made a career and reputation cutting two round holes in the wool which statistic-wielding politicians often pull over our eyes, recently published an excellent book called: “Les Bons chiffres pour ne pas voter nul en 2007” (There’s a play on words too elegant to translate, so let’s simply say The real figures to help you vote intelligently in 2007).

The format is good: each double page takes one subject, often something we assume we know all about, which Marseille then proceeds to reinterpret, for example the unemployment situation of the under-25’s, or which party builds the most council homes, or he shows how much each of us would receive if the bosses million-euro bonuses and golden parachutes were re-distributed amongst everybody. Not all of it is bad news for his compatriots – equally part of his Don’t-take –what-politicians-tell-you-for-granted message is that you are not suffering as much as you think you are..

Let’s start with a prime case of a politician hoistr by statistics, the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. Why do we hear so little about him today? Why is he not running for president? Mainly because a year ago he totally mishandled a new law to help the under-25’s get a first job – particularly the young from the dispossessed housing estates. At that time it was generally bandied about that 21.8% of French youth were unemployed: “It’s not in fact 21.8% of the young aged 15-24 years who are on the dole, but 21.8% of the young between 15-24 years who are no longer following at school or university and who are actively looking for a job,” writes Marseille. “And the difference is enormous: in 2004 there were 7,800,000 young people aged between 15 and 24. Of that number 4 695 899 (59.9%) were at school or university [entry to university is not selective in France, but open to anyone who has passed the baccalauréat] 2,089,404 (26.7%) had a job, with more than half employed on a lifetime contract, 439,406 (5.6%) were inactive, that is neither being educated nor registered at the unemployment office (young mothers at home, for example). 609,000 (7.8%) were unemployed. Less than the European average (8.2%) – the UK is at 7.6%.

Which just goes to show how much misuse or abuse of statistics wrongly causes despair amongst the young……and leads governments to absurd policies whose only effect is to tip the population out on to the street. Misuse of statistics kills…..” Indeed they killed M. De Villepin’s dreams of glory. For a while, at least.

Or more briefly, Marseille shows that in a country still largely dominated by unions (they are discreetly called les partenaires sociaux – the social partners), there are nearly a million fewer paid up union members, 1,884,000, than bosses, 2,788,000. “If the bosses decided to take to the street to defend their rights would easily outnumber the people who are supposed to represent the world of work.”

We all know that the French bête noire is the United States, in particular its jungle work-ethic. Perhaps to provoke his compatriots, Marseille fits the American work model, scaled down to match the different population, over the top of the existing French model, to see whether, if France was run along American lines, its employment situation would be very different. The result is astonishing. “France would have 5.3 million jobs more, whereas at the moment there are a bit more than 2 million people seeking a job.” In areas such as transport, post and telecommunications the number of people employed is, within the ratio, about the same. In schools and public health the American model would add half a million jobs. Where it differs wildly is in shops, hotels and restaurants. This seems strange because tourism is one of France’s major industries. Yet if France employed the same ratio of people in hotels and restaurants as the Americans, the number of people employed would rise from 770,000 to 1,790,000 – over a million more jobs would be created in that area alone. In shops too there is the same problem: “For a comparable volume of sales, Toys’R’Us employs between 30 and 40% less personnel in its French shops than in its American ones.” The number of people employed in shops has practically not increased since 1973, and has actually gone done since 1982, whereas the same sector in the United States has created 8 million jobs in the US. The reason, according to Marseille, is that the “hourly cost of an employee on the minimum wage is about 60% higher in France than in the States, less because of the wage itself than the charges which the employer has to pay..” But this is precisely the sort of comparison which no politician, let alone presidential candidate, dares say. And it begs another thorny question tackled in the same book by M. Marseille: why does a country with the highest employer charges (to pay for social security) also have the highest level of social security debt? Ask that question of a candidate and you are guaranteed a lot of red-faced waffle.