It has been a dismal year for President Jacques Chirac and his prime minister Dominique de Villepin. Following the defeat of the European Union's constitutional treaty in last May's referendum they had to face a revolt of disadvantaged immigrant suburban youth in November. Another convulsion followed in March and April this year when de Villepin's plan to reform French labour market employment laws was withdrawn following huge street protests and general strikes against it.
Both men are now embroiled in yet another political crisis over allegations that Mr de Villepin used the intelligence service in a failed attempt to discredit his arch-rival Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister. Notes by an intelligence officer are being leaked to French media and make it clear that a game of high political stakes was being played out over the affair, involving reported kickbacks on a defence deal. The suggestion that Mr Sarkozy was so involved is false, according the investigating magistrates, and the main focus now is on who planted the original allegations. It is becoming so intense that Mr Chirac last week said on television: "The republic is not a dictatorship of rumours, a dictatorship of slander". He insisted that he has full confidence in Mr de Villepin's government.
Whether such confidence can be continued looks increasingly unlikely. There is no more dogged and persistent opponent than Mr Sarkozy, and this affair gives him the perfect excuse to pursue Mr de Villepin and come out looking clean. The Socialist opposition is preparing a vote of no confidence. Media leaks of the documentation involved are selective but increasingly deadly. And all this is happening with another year to go before next year's presidential election.
The French system of power is so centralised that the political game of who will stand and win suffuses all other issues. Mr Sarkozy has played a skilled tactical game through these successive crises. He expressed militant opposition to the suburban revolt while offering fresh thinking on positive discrimination. He distanced himself from the labour market reform, which was very much Mr de Villepin's initiative. And now he has the chance to clear his name while discrediting his rival.
The big unknown in this imbroglio is how the French voting public will react. They could conclude that it typifies the whole political class and swing to the populist right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen rather than to the leading Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal. It is hard to see how such pressure can be sustained for another year.