Frogs, not sardines……
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.