News from France (and everyone is saying it with no denials so I suppose it must be la verité) that the First Lady, Carla Bruni, is separated from her husband and living in the apartment of a singer, Benjamin Biolay, while her husband has sought the condolences of ecology minister and karate champion, Chantal Jouanno, rather seems to emphasise the difference between them and us, the grenouilles and the rosbifs.
One had supposed that the French were above these things, leaping happily from bed to chaise longue, laughing at the small minded Puritanism of the British, but this appears to be being taken seriously by the press.
One issue is the actual position of the president. He is the Head of State, and therefore comparable to our Monarch. One can quite imagine a senior member of the Royal Family behaving like this (no need to imagine it, really) but Sarkozy is also an elected politician. It would be hard to imagine Sarah Brown going off to live with the winner of the X Factor, or Gordon shacking up with Teresa Jowell in retaliation.
Perhaps one problem is that Sarkozy appointed Chantal Jouanno, as he did Rachida Dati, with whom he has also been linked. It seems rather to throw their credentials into question. In fact Sarkozy may well be the most powerful man on the planet. He has nothing like the checks and balances hedging him round that Obama has, and yet whilst wielding the sort of power of an African dictator he is doing it in one of the richest economies in the world, and a nuclear power to boot. There’s food for thought.
In the meantime Sarko, who is having a tough time in the opinion polls, is confronted with the possibility that his opponent at the next election will be Dominique Strauss Kahn, the head of the IMF and a leading light in the Socialist party. Terrified at the thought that DSK might arrive in a blaze of glory to the rescue of Greece and therefore the euro, Sarko tried to organise a bail out of Papandreou’s struggling economy. The Germans weren’t having it and plan B, which is a Euro-IMF which, tee-hee, DSK wouldn’t be part of, now looks to require a new treaty, which Britain would veto, given the tears the last one caused.
Personally I can think of little worse than the statist lefty DSK running a European country but it seems a possibility if Sarko can’t keep his act together and his trousers on.
One had supposed that the French were above these things, leaping happily from bed to chaise longue, laughing at the small minded Puritanism of the British, but this appears to be being taken seriously by the press.
One issue is the actual position of the president. He is the Head of State, and therefore comparable to our Monarch. One can quite imagine a senior member of the Royal Family behaving like this (no need to imagine it, really) but Sarkozy is also an elected politician. It would be hard to imagine Sarah Brown going off to live with the winner of the X Factor, or Gordon shacking up with Teresa Jowell in retaliation.
Perhaps one problem is that Sarkozy appointed Chantal Jouanno, as he did Rachida Dati, with whom he has also been linked. It seems rather to throw their credentials into question. In fact Sarkozy may well be the most powerful man on the planet. He has nothing like the checks and balances hedging him round that Obama has, and yet whilst wielding the sort of power of an African dictator he is doing it in one of the richest economies in the world, and a nuclear power to boot. There’s food for thought.
In the meantime Sarko, who is having a tough time in the opinion polls, is confronted with the possibility that his opponent at the next election will be Dominique Strauss Kahn, the head of the IMF and a leading light in the Socialist party. Terrified at the thought that DSK might arrive in a blaze of glory to the rescue of Greece and therefore the euro, Sarko tried to organise a bail out of Papandreou’s struggling economy. The Germans weren’t having it and plan B, which is a Euro-IMF which, tee-hee, DSK wouldn’t be part of, now looks to require a new treaty, which Britain would veto, given the tears the last one caused.
Personally I can think of little worse than the statist lefty DSK running a European country but it seems a possibility if Sarko can’t keep his act together and his trousers on.
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