FRANCE: France's most ambitious politician has merged two campaigns, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
When it comes to selling Nicolas Sarkozy and the European constitutional treaty, anything goes: a Latino band with dancing girls in tight red satin trousers and gold lamé tops; video clips of Pope John Paul II and the Polish hero Lech Walesa; bongo drums and government ministers singing La Marseillaise.
If the 4,500-strong rally held by Sarkozy to promote a Yes vote in France's May 29th referendum proved anything, it was that he has "Sarko-ised" the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), founded as President Jacques Chirac's party three years ago and hijacked by Sarkozy last autumn.
Sarkozy has successfully merged the referendum campaign with his own premature presidential bid. While campaigning for or against the constitutional treaty, most French politicians are jockeying for position in the 2007 presidential race. But "Sarko" is the only one who will win either way. If France votes Yes, he'll share the credit. If France votes No, Chirac, the man he hopes to overthrow, will be blamed.
"Have you ever seen a Sarko-show before?" asked Mickaël Brun, the 20-year-old student next to me in the packed Palais des Sports. Brun is an official in Les Jeunes Populaires, the UMP's youth movement.
"Since Sarkozy took over, our membership has shot up 30 per cent," the student leader boasted. "He gives a dynamic image of the right. And he's changing the style of politics in France. We never had rallies like this before. It's almost American!"
Sarkozy represents "our only chance of winning" the presidency in 2007, Brun said.
"We like Chirac, but three terms would be too much. He's 72 now. He'd make a good president for Europe."
Chirac was mentioned and applauded only once, two-thirds of the way through the three-hour rally, when Simone Veil, a survivor of the Nazi death camps and the first woman president of the European Parliament, praised the French leader for recognising France's complicity in the deportation of Jews.
Veil, the grande dame of French politics, billionaire weapons and press magnate Arnaud Lagardère, television personality Michel Field and right-wing politicians who once considered Sarkozy an impudent upstart, all willingly served as warm-up acts.
When Sarkozy finally came to the podium, he laid into Chirac's handling of European issues. "If we had gone into depth more often these last few years, we wouldn't be having to make up for lost time like we are today," the UMP leader said.
In defining his "European dream" of "peace for all and success for each individual", Sarkozy revealed a vision of Europe diametrically opposed to Chirac's. The French president wants the rest of Europe to be more like France. Sarkozy wants France to be like Britain.
Though nominally on the right, when Chirac defends the constitutional treaty he uses the same arguments as the socialist leadership, claiming it protects "the French social model" and will enhance social protection across the union. Asked recently why Britain has far less unemployment than France, Chirac said the French refuse to sacrifice their social safety net to accomplish what Britain has.
Sarkozy's speech on Thursday night, with its allusions to Tony Blair's economic success, was heresy for much of France. "Europe does not exempt France from the path of modernisation that others have taken before us, and often better than us," he said. "The Europe we want will induce change in France."
It was folly to introduce a 35-hour working week in France "at a time when the rest of Europe was doing its utmost to work more", Sarkozy said. "Likewise, we cannot hope to gain from competition while imposing the highest social charges and taxes in Europe on our businesses.
"It is not being an ideological copycat to take inspiration from those in Europe who have found the path to full employment, and to turn our backs on the methods of those who endlessly sink us more deeply into mass unemployment," Sarkozy continued.
French joblessness has hovered around 10 per cent for the past 23 years. Analysts say high social charges, the difficulty of firing employees and generous unemployment benefits are the chief reasons.
"It is ideological blindness to refuse for our country what has worked elsewhere," Sarkozy said. "I say it because I believe it: the best social model is the one that gives work to everyone. Alas, therefore it is not ours."
France must stop making people who succeed feel guilty, Mr Sarkozy said. "Ambition is a quality," added France's most ambitious politician.
At the Palais des Sports, ladies with chignons and gold ear-rings, businessmen in suits and jeunes populaires in fluorescent T-shirts gave Nicolas Sarkozy repeated standing ovations. But whatever the fate of the constitutional treaty referendum, Sarkozy will have an uphill battle persuading the French to embrace the British economic model.