It was a pretty fundamental error: purchasing power, another way of saying the cost of living, is the prime French concern, ahead of unemployment and insecurity. It became an election issue and the candidate Sarkozy announced that if elected he should be judged on whether he gave his compatriots more purchasing power. So on Tuesday, during his first press conference as president, jaws dropped when he replied to the question what exactly he was going to do about it, with “What do you expect me to do about it? Empty the state coffers, which are already empty? Do you want me to give orders to private companies, which I don’t have the power to do?” Sarkozy’s rhetorical retort was not only unnecessarily aggressive (he had after all invited the 600 journalists there specifically to ask him questions), it was not only a slap in the face to all those who voted for him because he called himself ‘the president of purchasing power’, it was an extraordinary admission of his present powerlessness. This is the new Sarkozy - and not a good portent for the future. The 2007 pre-election model was “Together we can do anything”, the 2008 post-election model is a petulant “What do you expect me to do about it?” Not so much rupture as the return of the infamous Gallic shrug.

It is a particularly interesting error because up until now Sarkozy’s trade mark has been his skilful command of communication. That appears to be slipping - or perhaps he believes it doesn’t matter what he says, communication, or spin, is so powerful and his mastery of it so great that he can get away with anything.

For that, as they say, is not all. Another of the 600 journalists asked: “Do you want 2008 to see the end of the 35 hour week?” A simple, straightforward question to which the president replied in a simple straightforward way: “To say things as I think them, yes.” He wishes to see the end of the present legal limit on the number of hours one can work, which makes sense since he and others have tinkered with the legislation so much it is now a chaos of jumbled rules and counter-rules. But next day he was back-tracking at full speed: forget ending the 35 hour week, he said, “in 2008 I want us to go further in the reform of the 35 hour week”. Yet more rules to muddle up and contradict the existing ones. “I want to increase overtime, so I want to keep the legal limit on the working week.” (In itself an unrealistic assumption, made by someone who has never worked within a company, as though overtime were a matter of personal choice, not dependent on overflowing order-books.) He has done this before – say things in the heat of the moment, off-the-cuff but on-camera which he has to retract the following day – allowing concessions to the striking fishermen in Brittany, for example. But the 35-hour week business illustrates his fundamental problem: on the one hand, “To say things as I think them”, he wants to open up French companies to slightly more deregulation, a nod to the Anglo-Saxons. But politically he dare not – not only because he fears the sort of no-win confrontation De Villepin faced with his 2006 labour reforms for young people, but also because in French minds the 35-hour week has become a potent symbol of France – work less, relax more with the family, put living at the centre of life. Equally important, pushing the working week to 38 or 39 hours would mean more lay-offs, since in many industries there simply is not the demand, or the demand is already being satisfied in other ways such as out-sourcing. Domestic demand will only rise when people feel they have more money to spend – more purchasing power. But that, as the president so eloquently told us, is beyond his capabilities.

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