Watch out France: Nicolas Sarkozy is back, and he wants revenge

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.