This is a reply to Marie-France’s comment to yesterday’s post: “I am afraid “Isn’t he of Hungarian origin?!” shocks me……”, referring to Angela Joyce’s earlier question “Isn’t [Nicolas Sarkozy] of Hungarian origin?” Marie-France goes on to say “May be the readers of this blog should be taught what a mixed lot we French people are. You have the figures, I haven’t…….”

It is unfortunately impossible to know how many French nationals have non-French blood in them, since the census takers are not allowed under French law to ask about origins. But with the large number of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian immigrants from the south in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, added to the influx of political refugees from Soviet Russia in the 1920’s, Nazi Germany during the ’30’s and more Eastern European countries in 1945/46 (amongst whom Sarkozy’s father), all of whom, because of the colour of their skin, able to blend into the landscape, then the huge numbers coming in from Algeria in the 1960’s, some of European, others of North African origin, plus of course those who have arrived since and keep arriving, the population of France is as mixed and muddled-up as it is in Britain.

So I am fascinated that Marie-France is shocked by Angela Joyce’s phrase “Sarkozy’s Hungarian origin”. I know, as I wrote above, one is not supposed to know, discuss or take into consideration a person’s origins, whether racial or cultural, yet I find that a sad cutting-off of roots. My son is in a similar situation as the French president (!), born in France to a French mother and non-French but European father. I do my best to make him aware (and proud) of his English origins. I am not, unlike Jean-Marie Le Pen, one of those who believes everyone should decide on one single nationality (my son has three, very practical at airports). I am delighted that he passes everywhere as a French school-boy and probably thinks of himself most of the time as French (although some remark on his tête anglaise or his foreign name), but nevertheless I would be sorry if, when he grows up, people were shocked because he or others mentioned his English origins.

On the wider issue of what is Frenchness – and what is Britishness, a theme I shall be looking at over the next few weeks in relation to Gordon Brown’s green paper “The Governance of Britain” (which you can download here), I would be very interested to read other people’s views, especially ex-patriots who may feel pulled in different directions, on this very personal matter.

Rachida Dati’s popularity at the Ministry of Justice does not appear to be improving. Yesterday two more of her senior advisors left her, one resigned the other was “fired in particularly stormy conditions” according to Le Point. That brings the total since Mme Dati took office in May to seven. Her spokespeople say this is normal, the logical result of her having new cabinet director (the previous one was the first to resign). It’s odd, however, that Mme Dati’s ministry is the only one affected by this totally normal rash of resignations. Last week, according to rue 89, her entire cabinet contemplated a collective resignation – only staying on “from fear of being seen as the wicked aristocrats of the civil service fighting the pleasant and worthy [because of her background] young woman”. Indeed one has to be careful of what one says when discussing this iconic member of Sarkozy’s government: press criticism of Rachida Dati expressed when her original cabinet director plus two colleagues resigned was itself attacked by various anti-racist organisations. On the other hand the French magistrature does have a reputation for arrogance, probably linked to their status in the much-vaunted separation of powers.

The threat of collective resignation was brought to a head by an incident last week. A vice-prosecutor in the trial of a recidivist drug dealer was reported (possibly wrongly) as summing up “I will not demand the minimum sentence of four years [referring to Dati’s very recent law on minimum sentences for recidivists], because magistrates are not the instruments of power. Just because a law is passed does not mean that it has to be applied without discernment.” Normally, apparently, this sort of statement in open court would result in the vice-prosecutor being asked to explain himself before his local disciplinary committee – in this case the man was called to the Ministry to answer questions. He did not see the Minister herself, but at the end of his hearing the phrase “The report [procès-verbal] will be sent to the Minister, who will advise what is to follow” was added to the transcript. The magistrates’ unions and the vice-prosecutor’s immediate superior immediately leapt angrily to defend their colleague while, still according to rue 89, the discontent within Dati’s ministry continues to rise.

For information, the recidivist whom the vice-prosecutor did not wish to sentence to four years emprisonment was given eight months - with his original sentence added in makes 32 months.

An interesting clutch of articles about Nicolas Sarkozy in this week’s Courrier International – for those unfamiliar, a French weekly which consists mostly of articles gathered from the foreign press, often about France but also looking at their own and other countries. The interest is always to see how non-French journalists see the world: on Sarkozy this week there’s La Stampa, Frankfurter Allgemaine Zeitung, an Irish businessman writing in the Wall Street Journal and others. Of the eleven extracts, all are critical, except, understandably, the Bulgarian press. The Italian journalist (Carlo Bastasin) sees Sarkozy’s reforms as disappointingly déjà vues: “he is faithfully following the political model of the European right for the past 15 years [meaning, I think, recent Italian and German governments]…he is liberalizing the labour market while simultaneously protecting capital….still assuming that capital and work must be in opposition. Today it’s much more difficult to distinguish between capital and labour, in an open economy they are no longer antagonistic. Countries which have successfully faced up to globalisation…have reformed labour and capital at the same time. Margaret Thatcher weakened the resistance of the unions, but at the same time she made the financial markets more dynamic and opened up the capital available for British companies….the same happened in Scandinavia and the Benelux countries.”

The German papers unsurprisingly (given their experience with Sarkozy in Libya and at EADS) criticise Sarkozy as an “uncomfortable partner”, but also for not yet tackling what they see as the most important problems facing France, such as high employer charges, which are making French products uncompetitive – unlike German products. Much of this will be familiar to readers of the British press, but for me the most interesting is the idea put forward Lisbon’s Público (although it looks as if the two journalists, Leonor Baldaque and Pierre Vesperini are French). They come back to and build on the idea of Sarkozy’s treachery (which I said in a recent blog was once considered the key to his character but which now is never mentioned). As many of us remember, in the run-up to the 1995 presidential election Sarkozy stabbed his long-time mentor and benefactor, Jacques Chirac, in the back by siding with the heavily favoured front-runner Edouard Balladur. Chirac was a no-hoper, Sarkozy said. But Chirac won. Cast into outer darkness with the loser Balladur, Sarkozy was repeatedly and publicly humiliated by cat-calls, whistles and cries, in the National Assembly for example, of “Traitor, Traitor.” His many biographers agree that this was the descent into darkness for the man-who-wants-to-be-loved. The two journalists go further, seizing on these tortured months as being the genesis of Sarkozy’s present urge to create as many “traitors” as he can – in other words all those Socialists and Centrists whom he persuaded into his government: Eric Besson, Kouchner, Martin Hirsch, Jouyet, Fadela Amara, Jack Lang, Rocard and others. Not so much ouverture as trahison. “This is our hypothesis: M. Sarkozy has decided to make treachery not the exception but the norm in French political life.”

It’s an intriguing hypothesis. As is the wider implication given by the whole spread of articles that the French president, whose popularity and therefore success depends much on the media, who, through his own media, has persuaded a large majority of his own compatriots that he is doing it right, is seen abroad (and mostly in Europe, which he hopes to convert to his ideas) as a less than useful, if not potentially dangerous thing.