Nicolas Sarkozy is angry — a ‘caged lion’, one of his closest friends told Le Monde last week. He is angry about the state of France, the state of his party, his perceived persecution by the courts, but perhaps most of all about the fact that he isn’t in the Élysée Palace to clean the mess up. If the French were to clamour for his return, he is reported to have told a Goldman Sachs conference in London this month, he would come back ‘for duty’s sake’.
But Sarkozy is no Cincinnatus. He would not be treading wearily back from his plough to assume office for the good of France. He would be more like Obelix spying a wild boar. He would smack his lips and bear down greedily. Where another might see duty or burden, Sarkozy would see only -opportunity.
France is in its worst shape for more than three decades, since François Mitterrand nearly blew up the economy in the early 1980s trying to stimulate growth through government deficits and nationalisations. Unemployment is at 10.5 per cent and climbing. The economy is contracting. And overseeing the shambles is the suety, confidence-draining face of François Hollande.
Hollande has had one great moment in his 14 months in office. It was his military thrust into Mali: for a few weeks at least, he could revel in the reflected glory of France’s grizzled troops. Other than that, he has been a disaster, a boring, blithering excuse for a leader, hog-tied by his obligations to the hard left of his party.
Opinion polls — the latest have him down to 26 per cent approval — suggest that he has become France’s least popular president ever, as voters realise that his only strategy is to wait and hope that something will happen.
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