Name Nicolas Sarkozy
Age: 61.
Appearance: Short, scheming.
I remember him. Wasn’t he in charge of France or something? And didn’t he have that wife? He was president of France from 2007 until 2012 – well done for noticing. And yes, soon after being elected he divorced his wife, and four months later married the musician and former model Carla Bruni, the second former model of his three wives.
That’s right. They call him “Sarko”, don’t they? They do. He’s probably the biggest political personality in France.
Summarise this personality, please. Grandiose, charming, jingoistic, chippy. His hunger to become president was legendary before it finally happened.
Like Napoleon, basically? Basically. The French went off him badly towards the end, then changed their mind almost as soon as they replaced him with Hollande.
That’s despite the lingering corruption allegations? For French presidents, those are not uncommon. Anyway Sarko has denied them and is now back. Undaunted, he’s just announced that he plans to run for the presidency again next year, if he can win the Les Républicains nomination.
He never sounded easily daunted. Indeed. And now he has moved on to Marine Le Pen’s turf and rebranded himself as a man of the quite-far-right.
What does that mean? “It is time to engage in a determined combat against multiculturalism.” That’s from his new book, Tout Pour la France, or Everything for France.
Cripes. He wants to “drastically reduce” immigration, make people wait 10 years before applying for citizenship and suspend the right of legal immigrants to be joined by their close family.
Why can’t people who move to France have the liberté to live how they like? “We are not Anglo-Saxons who allow communities to live side by side while ignoring one another,” Sarko writes. Basically everyone has to change their personality when they move to France.
Isn’t that quite difficult for people to do? Might it not happen quicker if you don’t force them, and doesn’t it happen anyway after a couple of generations? Don’t interrupt Sarko when he’s talking tough.
Do say: “Imagine trying to get the Republican party nomination with lots of xenophobic posturing!”
Don’t say: “Yeah, that would never work.”
