FRANCE: Lara Marlowehears the centrist candidate waxing caustic about Nicolas Sarkozy's rich friends.
Nicolas Sarkozy should have known better than to make fun of a man's tractor, for the snub gave the centrist candidate François Bayrou the most successful passage of his two-hour speech at a big rally on Wednesday night. It was the sound bite that radio and TV stations played over and over.
Mr Bayrou is proud of his tractors: two Massey Ferguson Pony model machines that the horse breeder and politician climbs on to for photo opportunities. Two toy tractors sit on his desk.
So when Mr Sarkozy said earlier this week: "The election of the person who will lead the fifth nation in the world is not a question of Mme [ Ségolène] Royal's smile or Mr Bayrou's tractor", all of France knew what he meant.
"I heard Nicolas Sarkozy mock the tractor that was such an important part of my youth," Mr Bayrou told the packed Zénith auditorium in northeastern Paris. "There are people for whom farmers and workers, probably teachers, and basically everyone who keeps France alive, deserve only condescension and snide smiles. He wouldn't have said that if I'd started life as the heir of a multibillionaire."
Mr Sarkozy counts the telecommunications and television heir Martin Bouygues, the arms and publishing heir Arnaud Lagardère, and the luxury magnate Bernard Arnault among his closest friends. The crowd roared with laughter and applauded.
"I'm proud of having worked with my hands," Mr Bayrou continued. "If you want to lead the world's fifth power, it's better training to know how to slog, to know how difficult it is to make ends meet . . . to see people other than stock-market billionaires and show-business stars when you go out." If he had to choose between being the president of the stock market or being that of "workers, farmers, artisans, teachers, doctors and nurses, my choice is already made", Mr Bayrou said. "The only president is the president of the people."
Mr Bayrou had perhaps provoked Mr Sarkozy, by in effect calling him "chicken". "We were promised there'd be no more no-go zones," Mr Bayrou said on television, before the tractor insult. "There are so many no-go zones in France that . . . the minister of the interior himself cannot go to the banlieue [ immigrant suburbs]. Do you know any other country in the world where the minister of the interior cannot go to the suburbs, despite all his bodyguards?"
The national motto of liberté, égalité, fraternité was a call to resistance against the powerful, Mr Bayrou said. He repeatedly attacked the entrenched nepotism and cronyism that have characterised right-wing and left-wing French governments.
"When a young man or woman decides to make a career in government, I want them to think how to do their job, not how to find a powerful protector," he said. "The French people are weary, and there's not much distance between a weary people and an angry people."
Nicolas Kahn (25) and his girlfriend Virginie Gravier (26) have just returned to Paris after two years in London. As they search for jobs, they're contemplating France's rocky future.
Mr Kahn's sympathies are on the left, and he was inclined to vote for Ms Royal. But "her promises are vague", he says. "She lists a long series of measures, all of which would be very costly, at the same time that she talks about the debt. The economy is not her strong point."
Ms Gravier finds Mr Bayrou's speeches "more realistic than Ségolène's, less aggressive than Sarkozy's. He's the least bad of the three," she said.
For her, education is the most important issue. For Mr Kahn, "France's position in globalisation" is the most important question. "If we want to compete with other countries, we have to lower all our taxes. But these taxes finance our public services, which are good," he said, neatly summarising the economic debate that French politicians cannot seem to posit clearly.
Mr Sarkozy would slash taxes and social insurance charges to make France more competitive. Mr Kahn believes the answer lies in greater tax harmonisation within Europe, and he trusts Mr Bayrou to achieve that because of his European record.
The young Frenchman is also alarmed by Mr Sarkozy's "France; love it or leave it" attitude towards immigrants: "When he talks like that, he pits people against each other. It's unhealthy." And he finds Mr Sarkozy's support for rock star and tax exile Johnny Halliday, such as his promise to do away with 95 per cent of death duties, "deeply inegalitarian".
Both right and left have tried to discredit Mr Bayrou by claiming his small UDF party could not achieve a majority in legislative elections in June. The offensive seems to be working; Mr Bayrou is losing ground in the polls.
"And you, with whom would you govern?" he taunted the big parties on Wednesday night. Would Mr Sarkozy make a pact with the extreme right? Would Ms Royal ally herself with the Communists and Trotskyists?
"The only possible majority for France, the only stable and constructive majority, is the one that enables left, right and centre to work together," Mr Bayrou concluded.