The Spectator: Meet the real Sarkozy

by Allister Heath

...Ever since anyone can remember, French politicians have been following Napoleon Bonaparte’s advice: to be a success in the world, promise everything and deliver nothing. The only thing Sarkozy, a nervous man, shares with Napoleon, apart from a towering ambition, is his small height. If he has his way, he will change France for the better; if not, he says he will go back to being a lawyer. He tells his friends that he wants to be president for only one five-year term ‘and then make a lot of money. A lot of money’. Truly to revolutionise France in such a short time is an impossibly tall order; but if anybody is up to the task of starting to reverse France’s decline, it is surely Sarkozy....

...Like scholars such as Olivier Roy, Sarkozy doesn’t believe the main problem of the French ghettos to be Islamic extremism. Instead, he argues that the rioters’ only religion is television, which he holds partly responsible for the fact that they have aped the manners of American rappers and criminal gangs. But he also opposes Turkish membership of the European Union, arguing that France has found it very difficult to integrate its Muslim immigrants. He blames ‘badly controlled’ immigration for last autumn’s riots and the fact that the authorities traditionally turn a blind eye to gangs in the ghettos. Sarkozy sees reclaiming the banlieues for the French state as one of his key missions....

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