Segolene in a tropical paradise

To escape the heat of a presidential campaign marked by practical jokes, poisonous party infighting, and a public spat with her partner over money – taxpayers money admittedly – Segolene escaped from Paris to the bathe in the ‘warmth and energy’ of the Caribbean. After a difficult month, she admitted ‘it’s not a bad thing to put some distance’ from the French capital – roughly 7,000 kilometres – and surround herself with less critical crowds on the French islands of Martinique – where she spent three years as a child and one year as a civil servant – and Guadeloupe.
For four days, she was constantly followed by the sounds of the Carribean chart hit ‘Celimene,’ tweaked to ring out her name, and men and women in bring colours clapping, singing and dancing.
‘Seg, Seg, Seg, Segolene – ooWayhe – Seg, Seg, Seg, Segolene.’
At rally after rally, the Socialiste candidate smiled and swayed her arms, though her legs seemed less eager to swing with the rhythms of her childhood.
She was also greeted with a specially composed song - ‘weclome back to the school of your youth’ - by the pupils at Saint-Joseph de Cluny, still wearing the same uniform that Segolene had once adorned, a pleated blue and red tartan skirt teamed with a white shirt.
‘I wish for you to be happy at school and to have a wonderful career which allows you to be free and fulfilled as women,’ she told her adoring audience. Segolene recounted afterwards to journalists how her Caribbean experience helped her career. ‘Afterwards I had such a nostalgia that for homework I wrote poems about Martinique which helped me win the first prize for poetry.’
In a whirlwind series of open-air meetings, dotted with colourful diversions such as a beach pick-nick and market visit, one thing struck me as quite extraordinary. As the sweat poured off her minders and the photographers jostling around her, Segolene proved she is a real lady. She didn’t even glow, let alone transpire.




In the market of Fort de France, she made her way past crates and supermarket trolleys piled high with exotic fruits – limes, melons, star fruit – to press home her advantage over Sarkozy, who was forced to cancel a December 2005 visit because a law on teaching the positive effects of colonialism prompted protests in the overseas territories partly populated with descendents of slaves.
Segolene said she would be a president of a ‘mixed race France,’ and pleased the crowds with a few words in Creole.
‘Moin se on famn doubout, nou kay casse ca,’ which translates as ‘I am a tough lady, and we’re gonna shake things up.’
Her Caribbean visit was also a welcome break for the pack of journalists following the Socialist campaign.
‘It’s better than Scotland huh?’ said more than one hack as I dipped my tired and pasty limbs into the turquoise-blue sea.
‘Dare I say it, but it’s better even than France,’ I retorted, only to be met with boos and splashing.
‘But Emma, this is France,’ replied a radio journalist, insistent that this Carribean haven is as much a part of the Republique as Le Havre or the medieval villages of Bordeau.

Vive l’Ecosse libre!

On the plane to the French Antilles, discussion turned to Segolene’s latest gaffe. She’d been duped by an impostor posing as the prime minister of Quebec into joking about the possibility of Corsican independence.
‘Vive l’Ecosse libre,’ quipped her close aide Patrick Menucci as I approached the group.
‘Well the latest polls show….’ I began, relating the rise of the Scottish National Party in opinion surveys ahead of the May elections to the Scottish parliament. But his eyes had already glazed over.

Marital Squabbles

‘The only failing’ of Segolene, Montebourg said with a smile on his lips. ‘Is her companion.’
His comments were met with a shocked silence. Not the reaction he’d been anticipating. When the Canal Plus show was over, he called Segolene to offer his resignation. She decided his quip merited a less severe telling-off and suspended him for a month instead. Hollande, it was reported, was not amused.
The solution may have satisfied the father of her four children, but it made her look like a school teacher. When Montebourg returns as her spokesman in a month’s time, will anybody take him seriously?

N'Ayez Pas Peur

French Trade Minister Christine Lagarde said she gave up a well paid job at Chicago law firm Baker & McKenzie to come back to France beccause she thought she could help people get over their fear of globalisation.
'I'll always remember the frequency with which the words protect, protection and assistance are used in connection with what is alleged to be expected by the French people,' she told a group of Anglo-American journalists before jetting off to the World Economic Forum in Davos. 'The words I was acccustomed to use were encourage, entice, incentivise, prioritise. There is a huge fear and concern that results from globalisation and the movement of people, goods and services around the world.'
She came back to France, and may be seeking to run for mayor in her home-town of La Havre, because 'deep down you are where you are born.' As well as representing France on the world stage, Lagarde sees her job as educating French people of the benefits of globalisation, teaching school children not to be afraid.
Sarkozy, she says, is the answer. 'It is the only solution for France to take action and reform itself, accept the changes around the world and accept that it is part of what is going on. There is a huge issue of confidence, courage, that needs to be addressed.'

Queen of France

A BBC radio documentary revealed the unlikely news that in 1956 the then French Prime Minister Guy Mollet came cap in hand to the British government seeking a merger between the two countries. When that didn’t happen he asked to become part of the British Commonwealth, assuring his counterpart Sir Anthony Eden that there would be no difficulty accepting the Queen as head of state!

Preposterous as it might seem today, the idea was perhaps not so crazy 50 years ago. France turned to its ancient enemy, which had also been an ally in two recent world wars, when the pressure of economic difficulties and an escalating crisis in Suez combined with a bloody war in Algeria became too much. French confidence was likely uncharacteristically weak after its inglorious actions in the Second World War. Desperate times require desperate measures and a union was first suggested by Winston Churchill in June 1940 to stave off French capitulation to the Nazis.

British newspapers had great fun imagining what such a world could have been like. The Guardian fantasised about better food and trains that run on time whilst raising concerns whether you’d be able to afford either, given France’s current employment problems. In France, the idea didn’t go down well. ‘I had a good opinion of Mr Mollet before. I think I am going to revise that opinion,’ said Jacques Myard, the short and portly UMP lawmaker.

British cabinet papers show that the proposal was eventually rejected and a year later France signed the Treaty of Rome with Germany and the four other founding members of what was to become the European Union. Indeed Jean Monnet, the Frenchman credited with creating the EU along with Robert Schuman, was one of the authors of Churchill’s offer of union. So perhaps it wasn’t all about peace and healing the wounds of two world wars. Could it be that the EU was a way of getting one up on Britain after she spurned poor old France. Could it be that Chirac and the French establishment are so sniffy about the English language due to the near reality that had Mollet had his way the corridors of power could have been resonating with the language of Shakespeare?

So how much do you earn Francois?

Socialist leader Francois Hollande thought he was hitting out at the people he has said he doesn’t like: the rich. Anyone earning above 4,000 euros should be putting more into the state kitty he said, before being shouted down by Segolene and her allies. At his New Year’s wishes to the press, he insisted he’d merely been speaking his mind. It will be up to Segolene to arbitrate, he said. It seems many people earning 4,000 euros a month don’t consider themselves rich.
Hollande admitted to earning 6,000 euros per month as a law maker, but appeared unsure if this was net or brut.
‘Check with National Assembly,’ he advised journalists.
While this was an attempt at transparency, it shows that the self-declared anti-rich champion earns so much money he isn’t aware of how much is trickling into his bank account each month. Lucky for him.

Charmed by Le Pen

For my own credibility, I shouldn’t admit to it. But I will. Last night, I had dinner with Jean-Marie Le Pen and I found him quite charming. Admittedly, we didn’t dwell on his more odious policies – he has been advised by his daughter to tone-down his revisionist views of history, racist barbs and virulent nationalism. But on a lot of issues, he talks a lot more sense than any of the other politicians out there. And it is this, and not solely an inherent racism among French people, that explains his widespread appeal.

‘You have to convince French people that to look at the state to take care of everything will bring certain ruin,’ he told a dinner party of mainly foreign journalists. ‘Giving freedom back to French people is to give them back responsibility.’

Successive French governments, he says, have proved incompetent. Citing the example of the growing tent city of homeless people along Canal Saint Martin, he said: ‘We have people running this country who don’t want or don’t have the means to solve the problem. They tackle the consequences and not the cause.’ To solve the tent problem ‘they make a law’ giving homeless people the right to demand a roof above their heads. ‘Laws never solve anything. How will they put in place this law?’ Homeless people ‘can’t tale a lawyer because they don’t have a centime. It’s pitiful.’

His answer of course, is better immigration controls. He denies all charges of racism, challenging a journalist who assumes that the woman appearing on National Front posters challenging state failures over assimilation is a beurette. ‘She could have been Sicilian,’ he says.

‘People will be surprised about how many people in the suburbs vote for me,’ he claims. And if his record in predicting electoral success is anything to go by, he could well be right. While she was being overlooked by the mainstream French establishment back in 2002, Le Pen picked Segolene as the next Socialist leader. ‘She has a sublime name that goes down well on the left bank and Boulevard Saint Germain,’ he said. And the party ‘needed something new.’ He also claims he predicted Jospin’s defeat in 2002.

On his own chances, he cast himself as a romantic warrior. ‘I’m like Zorro,’ he said. ‘ You never see him directly but you know he is there. You hear his horse.’

La Reine de Liberation

‘Emma, today you are the Queen of Liberation,’ said Philippe Gouillaud, Elysee correspondent for Le Figaro, as we waited outside the palace, I had arrived late and the ministers were already spilling out of the doors. ‘T’es tres belle dans Libe,’ said Ludo, as he rushed past me to take a photo of Villepin. Everyone it seemed has seen the photograph. Tucked away on page 12, the prime minister was pictured with Chirac and Sarkozy. Lurking in the background was a not particularly flattering but unmistakeable picture of me.
‘Behind three great men, stands one great woman,’ texted Els, a friend from Brussels. Fame at last!
Once the Elysee has emptied, we crossed the road to Hotel Marigny, where we waited for Cope to give his weekly post-cabinet press conference. When he’d finished going through the agenda, he started taking questions. I had been asked to check out a potential dispute with the European Commission over its proposals for a common EU energy policy and I put my hand up without my much thought.
‘Did this issue come up?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘But I am not sure what you are talking about. Can you be more specific?’
‘Um,’ I said, the microphone suddenly feeling very heavy in my hand. I opened my mouth slowly, weighing up whether my brain was going to recall enough of the article I had quickly skimmed through before leaving the office in time. I let out a little laugh. My brain was not cooperating. ‘It’s something I was requested to ask,’ I said playing for a little time. ‘It concerns an article in Le Figaro.’ Still nothing. ‘And,’ I said slowly. ‘I have to admit I can’t remember the details. Does anyone have a copy they could lend me to help me out?’
The room broke out in laughter. Though everyone found it funny, my colleagues were sympathetic. Cope’s spokeswoman rushed towards me and within seconds I had a copy of the newspaper in my hand, allowing me to carry on with my questioning. But Cope wasn’t having any of it.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting five years to get one over on a journalist like that.’ Though my cheeks were glowing a little, I managed to laugh along with everyone else.
Once the press conference was over, he stopped for a chat.
‘What was that all about – asking a question you didn’t know anything about?’ he teased me.
My fellow journalists quickly stepped in to help out.
‘It’s often like that at a news agency – you get asked about many things,’ said one.
‘If only journalists knew what they were talking about each time they asked a question,’ said another.
‘The problem is my head,’ I told Cope. ‘It’s not big enough to remember everything that is swimming about in it.’
‘It’s not that your head is not big enough,,’ he replied. ‘It’s that you don’t have a big head. No French person would admit to not knowing what they were talking about like that.’