Je vais et je viens, entre tes reins...
Not just one but two Sarkos were in London this week, and they wowed us good. Of course the British tabloids were obsessed with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: they love beauty, style and glamour, and she has lots of those. But her performance - and that's what it was - also mattered politically to her husband, who's anxious to leave behind the "bling bling" image he's acquired in France these last few months, to the disapproval of the older, more conservative voters his project needs. Partly by studied demureness, partly by her good public performance - in very good English - before an audience of women with Sarah Brown, and partly by overall star quality and chic, she managed to rise above even the publication of nude photos, and attract comparisons with Diana and Jackie Kennedy. Her London succès d'éclat may be the moment the French begin to feel they have a first lady to be proud of - so she's helped her husband's domestic position immensely.
And now to Monsieur Sarko. I thought British commentators on the whole underestimated just how generous he was to Britain in his speech to both houses of Parliament (I can only find a four-minute extract with English translation, but you can listen to the whole thing in French). Talking about Britain as the keystone of democracy is fairly predictable, but what struck me was how passionately he thanked Britain for its sacrifices in both world wars last century. His tone, as a much as his words, conveyed real feeling about this, and a clever insight into how the British themselves feel about their history. But he also praised Britain's economic reform in the Thatcher and Blair eras, saying Britain is a model of adaptation to global challenges and of liberalisation. I thought that, too, was a remarkable tribute to Anglo-Saxon ways, unimaginable from any previous French President.
Vous êtes devenus pour nous un modèle, une référence, et nous devons nous inspirer de ce que vous avez su faire, quelle que soit la couleur politique de vos gouvernements, ces vingt ou ces trente dernières années.
Not everyone has been bowled over completely, though. John Redwood, Britain's leading economic liberal politician, rightly spotted Sarkozy's reference in his speech to supporting strategic sectors (energy must be one of those - interesting that this was one of the subjects he discussed with Gordon Brown on Thursday), and clearly doubts he's really a Thatcher-style reformer. Con Coughlin in the Telegraph reminds us that Sarkozy's words made a big splash in Washington went he went there last year, but that his action, on NATO and on Afghanistan, has been less impressive. Nick Robinson felt the power of French seduction but also has doubts about how Sarko will treat us tomorrow morning. If he wants to use London and the idea of British success to relaunch his domestic reforms, fine: I think he needs to show much more drive at home, as well as seriousness, if he's to make up for his lost year in power. But as far as Anglo-French relations are concerned, we're more interested in his commitment to competition in the internal market, in reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, in French attitudes to NATO and defence.
As for French reactions: Libération noticed Carlamania, and Le Nouvel Observateur picked up on British doubts about the substance behind Sarko's spin. My favourite, though, was this eye-witness account of the state banquet at Windsor by Le Monde's cheekily Anglosceptic London correspondant, Marc Roche, who loves baiting the British and puncturing our pomposities. He seems to have thought Sarko "a teensy bit lost" among the mahogany, silver and Sèvres.
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