‘I want Sarkozy to be right’

28 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

Of course, the authorities in France have one great advantage compared with those of apartheid South Africa: they represent the great majority of the population, at least when in confrontation with those whom Sarko famously, or infamously, called la racaille (rabble), a word that soon reverberated around the world. This, no doubt, explains why I was able to travel hundreds of miles in France during the riots without seeing so much as one burnt-out car, and was able to dine in a provincial city in an excellent restaurant, surrounded by bourgeois talking of their relationship problems, while being within walking distance of some of les jeunes who were expressing themselves pyrotechnically. It was as if the diners were sure that between them and the disgruntled young stood the CRS (the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité), whose commander was reported as having said that the worse things were, the calmer the CRS became: a statement that les jeunes, badly educated as they no doubt were, knew they should take seriously.

These, then, are the problems that any French president will have to face: a spiralling public debt, youth unemployment caused by a rigid labour market, and social alienation of a catastrophic depth, intensity and frequency.

Is Sarko the man to deal with all this? Certainly, he can talk tough; but when the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, took the first very timid steps to reduce the inflexibility in the labour market that keeps unemployment so high in the townships, Sarko lost no time in trying to reap personal political advantage by failing to support him. The one and only correct political prediction I have ever made in my life was to foresee that if the government tried to alleviate the situation in the townships, there would be rioting on the Boulevard St Germain; and when there was such rioting, Sarko voted for surrender. It remains to be seen whether he is made of sterner stuff when he has no rival (as the Prime Minister then was) to outflank or betray.