Clive Davis

SARKO SCRUTINIZED

 

Apologies for the lack of posts yesterday. All the driving up and down the motorway was more draining than usual,  by the time I reached home again I was too exhausted to type in a straight line. I did, however, just about summon up the energy to watch a little of Nicolas Sarkozy's Q&A appearance on Télé 5. The part I caught was impressive. On immigration and national identity, he struck the right note, defending traditional French values, equality of the sexes and so on, while keeping his distance from Le Pen.

As for his oft-noted "demagogic" instincts, I thought Naima Bouteldja's Guardian column would come up with stronger evidence than this: 

Sarkozy's ability to slay all in his path to self-promotion was in evidence as long ago as 1983, when he was just 28 and right-hand man to Charles Pasqua, the frontrunner for the Neuilly-sur-Seine mayoralty. When Pasqua was hospitalised with a hernia, Sarkozy disloyally chose to campaign for himself, allegedly savouring his political victory with the line: "I've fucked them all!" Sarkozy has never denied this rumour.

Or this:

... After riots in the suburbs he fumed: "I do find it unacceptable that the juvenile court of Bobigny hasn't handed out one single prison sentence."

Not really my idea of a smoking gun.... As you probably know, he's already won the Economist's endorsement:

It has been said that France advances by revolution from time to time but seldom, if ever, manages to reform. Mr Sarkozy offers at least a chance of proving this aphorism wrong.

But this journalist thinks he's blown it with the youth vote:

"Think of it in terms of a family. Segolene Royal - she's like your annoying mother, telling you to clean your room but at least she'd give you some pocket money so you could go out on a Saturday night. But Sarkozy is obviously the strict father who may want what's best for you but is not able to explain it to you so you would always want to go against him. It's like the army. Don't think, just obey."

FRENCH FUTURE?

John Lichfield, the Indy's Paris correspondent, sifts through new batches of official statistics. On balance, they're surprisingly upbeat.

A GLIMPSE INSIDE A FRENCH GHETTO

A reporter rides the bus to an underclass housing development on the outer fringes of Lyons. Lots of different root causes -  economic, cultural, religious - and they still have a Communist mayor, not to mention a main boulevard named after Lenin:

Anyone who has work leaves. Ghassan goes to the airport St-Exupéry, where he has a job at the luggage counter, un boulot CDD, which means contrat à durée déterminée, a job with an expiry date. With a CDD under your sleeve, you're likely to stay in the kid's room in France. The bank won't give you a loan, the landlord not a single cell. 73 percent of all first jobs are CDD, and only half of them turn into a long-term job, a CDI or contrat à durée indéterminée. Ghassan would actually like to get away from the luggage and become a steward for Air France. But to do that, he would need a few things that he doesn't have, like a high school diploma.

DID THE ATLANTIC JUST GROW A FEW FEET WIDER?

Some more examples of continental drift...

The good news, according to NY Post columnist Ralph Peters, is that "Eurabia" won't happen. Why? Well, that's the bad news. The reason it won't happen is that the indigenous Euros, for all their addiction to "narcotic socialism" are much too skilled at genocide to tolerate uppity minorities:

I have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which U.S. Navy ships are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims. After all, we were the only ones to do anything about the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans.

Mark Steyn responds at Power Line.

The Times meanwhile runs a front-page lead on a State Department official's unusually candid remarks about the Anglo-American alliance:

Kendall Myers, a senior State Department analyst, disclosed that for all Britain’s attempts to influence US policy in recent years, "we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business". He added that he felt "a little ashamed" at Mr Bush’s treatment of the Prime Minister, who had invested so much of his political capital in standing shoulder to shoulder with America after 9/11.

End of the special relationship? The Times leader writer disagrees:

The man who is the favourite to succeed Mr Bush — John McCain — is a committed Anglophile, much as Mr Blair’s near- certain replacement — Gordon Brown — is an Atlanticist to his core. The title of the seminar at which Dr Myers spoke was "How special is the US-UK relationship after Iraq?" The correct answer to the question remains "very special".

Personally, I have my doubts. Regardless of what the political leaders do or say, I think that events in Iraq will speed a broader cultural shift towards Europe. But I'll be happy to be proved wrong on that.

MEMRI'S MAN

Q- There are so many Muslims in Europe. How many of them are really involved in extremism?

A - There is no collective "they." The majority actually does acclimate [sic] and adjust...

Via Mick Hartley, a thought-provoking Jerusalem Post interview with Yigal Carmon, founder of the Middle East monitoring organisation, MEMRI. I mentioned recently that I was uneasy about having MEMRI ads channeled onto this blog. That didn't mean I disapproved of its work, just that I felt slightly compromised. Reading the article -  which, aside from the Palestinian issue, also has instructivel and undogmatic things to say about Islam in Europe - has set my mind at ease somewhat.

THE GALLIC DIVIDE

Pondering another political fracas - striking firemen, this time - the Economist's Paris correspondent stumbles across a self-evident truth:

There really are two Frances. One demonstrates; the other shops.

UPDATE: An e-mail from a reader who has seen it all before:

From living in France I can tell you that the demonstrators and shoppers are often one and the same. One-day strikes burst out all over France at this time of year and are ideal opportunities for Christmas shopping!

THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE - OR THE FUTURE OF THE FAMILY?

As you may have noticed, the politician who's in the running to become France's first female president has four children, but isn't married. The end of civilisation as we know it? A typically thoughtful, non-dogmatic assessment from Reihan Salam.

CHANNEL CROSSING

Colin Randall, formerly the Telegraph's man in Paris and now an independent blogger, is winding up his stint in France. As he bids farewell, he offers some last-minute observations on the way they live now. A sampling:

* Paris may not, despite a former colleague's insistence, be the City of A Thousand Bad Restaurants. But I am up to double figures and truly believe London now has a distinct edge on quality, variety and service - though not always value.

* Provincial France is still streets ahead for eating out. But my search for a good Indian restaurant here was doomed to failure.

* Brits who want to live in France, but stick to English-speaking ghettos and reject all notions of integration, bring disgrace on their country and should go home.

CITOYENS

Every country has its own form of high-minded boilerplate. These entries in a light-hearted guide to French political vocabulary are, well, just very Gallic:

républicain = French, democratic, patriotic, meaningless.

valeurs républicaines (things you believe in)

banquet républicain (dinner with politicians)

la justice républicaine (what you praise when you win a court case)

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

One of the themes in Fareed Zakaria's excellent study of the US political system, The Future of Freedom, is that it's possible to have an excess of democratic accountability. I thought of that as I read David Rennie's latest dispatch from EU-land. Too much transparency, he complains, can gum up the works:

I'm serious here. It was Britain, I am ashamed to say, that started this latest campaign to open up as many EU ministerial meetings as possible - though once it looked like becoming a reality, the British soon got cold feet. Then, alas, came the lovely, transparent Finns, who hold the current rotating presidency of the EU, and decided, in a Nordic niceness sort of way, to open up as many deliberations as possible.

And what is the result? I'll tell you the result, as I could have told you the result months ago, before the doors were opened. Ministers playing to their domestic special interests back home, unable to make any painful concessions, even when it would be in everyone's interests... Let the TV cameras in, and you make such deals and compromises impossible...

So have I turned completely native, signing up to horrid Brussels secrecy? Not at all...If the CEO came to watch your next routine meeting at work, or it was filmed for training purposes, just how much really useful work would you get done?