Ségo and Sarko: not so different

22 November 2006

Such works are taken seriously in Melle, explained one of her oldest political allies in the area, the town’s deputy mayor, Yves Debien. ‘For 30 years people had been talking about doing something for that cheese, including some well-known politicians. But nothing was actually done before she came along,’ he beamed proudly. Other projects are no less fondly recalled: her support for a rare breed of cow, or the motorway whose route she got diverted, after persuading Mitterrand to visit the marshland it was due to cross.

Campaigns for cheeses and cows may seem footling — at times Ségo sounds less like a modern Socialist than a tireless squire’s wife or colonial memsahib — but they form the basis of the Royalist view of government. It is not just about spending public money — though in her two years of power she has raised local taxes by 14.3 per cent. But above all, she favours small, highly visible state projects that benefit targeted groups of voters. Her favourite slogan is: ‘A euro spent is a useful euro.’

Her strategy took off two years ago, after she was elected to the presidency of the Poitou-Charentes regional government. French regions do not enjoy enormous power, but Ségo has fully leveraged the controls she does have to create a nanny state in which no detail is too small to escape her attention.

School pupils now receive £20 vouchers from the Poitou–Charentes regional council to buy textbooks, while registered apprentices get free driving lessons. During the bird flu crisis of the spring, she yomped round farmers’ markets crying, ‘Come on, we’re going to eat chicken,’ and urged every family to eat two chickens a week. The environment is an abiding Royal interest, and the region’s 1.7 million citizens are being offered subsidies to buy rainwater collection systems. To get the money, applicants must fill in a printed request addressed directly to Mme Royal, just in case they forget the source of the largesse.