Theodore Dalrymple

‘I want Sarkozy to be right’

Theodore Dalrymple, who lives in France, says that the presidential frontrunner faces an awesome range of problems — unsettlingly similar to those that will confront the Prime Minister unlucky enough succeed Gordon Brown

issue 31 March 2007

Theodore Dalrymple, who lives in France, says that the presidential frontrunner faces an awesome range of problems — unsettlingly similar to those that will confront the Prime Minister unlucky enough succeed Gordon Brown

Les Vans

During the height of the Dreyfus affair, a cartoon appeared depicting the setting of a bourgeois dinner party before and after it had taken place. Afterwards, the room was wrecked, as if a platoon of marauding soldiers had passed through it. The problem was that the guests had talked about the affair.

The current French election is a little like this. The word Sarko is enough to raise the temperature and the heart rate at any family gathering. He is the best of men; he is the worst of men. He is a true patriot; he is an unscrupulous opportunist. He is the only hope; he is a dictator in the wings.

The word Ségolène, on the other hand, has the opposite effect, a little like the tranquillisers that the French take in larger doses than any other nation in the world.

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