French politics. The Nicolas v Jacques show

The consequences of Nicolas Sarkozy taking over the president's party

THE centre-right politician was restless, hungry for the top job, keen to build himself a platform for a presidential bid while still in his 40s. His relations with the sitting president were dreadful. The centre-right had done disastrously in recent regional polls. So he quit the government, and built up a party machine to promote his own electoral ends.

The year was 1976, and the politician was Jacques Chirac. It took him another 19 years to get to the presidency. Today, his most bitter rival and the man who so eerily resembles him in his early days, Nicolas Sarkozy, is hoping that he can achieve the same goal in a fraction of the time.

The deal between the veteran Gaullist president and his brazen young finance minister was finally tied up quietly last week, as the country was distracted by the kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq. Under the pact, Mr Chirac agreed not to block Mr Sarkozy's candidature to be head of the ruling party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). In return, Mr Sarkozy agreed to leave the government.

For Mr Chirac, this was a much-needed reassertion of his authority. In July he declared firmly that he would fire any minister who became the party head, since this would undermine the prime minister's authority. Although Mr Sarkozy at first hoped that he could flout such a rule, in the end he agreed to go.

Yet the greater victory, symbolically and substantively, has gone to Mr Sarkozy. Symbolically, the upstart outsider has grabbed hold of the president's personal war machine (other minor candidates may stay in the race, but the result of the party members' vote in November is now a foregone conclusion). This party, after all, is the direct descendant of the one that Mr Chirac founded in 1976. In its most recent incarnation, as the UMP, it was designed solely to elect a centre-right government and then become a platform for Mr Chirac's chosen successor, Alain Juppe.

When, instead, Mr Juppe had to quit politics after being convicted of political corruption in January, la chiraquie, the president's circle, stepped up efforts to keep the party out of Mr Sarkozy's hands. “Tout sauf Sarkozy” (Anyone but Sarkozy) was its mantra, as it sought to marginalise the man whom the president has distrusted ever since he backed a rival presidential candidate, Edouard Balladur, in 1995. Yet a few months on, Mr Chirac has proved powerless to stop the party falling into Mr Sarkozy's hands.

Substantively, the UMP will supply Mr Sarkozy with a useful electoral war-chest - parties now get a state subsidy and cannot accept private donations - plus a power base from which to prepare his 2007 presidential bid. Between now and November, when Mr Sarkozy leaves the finance ministry, he will build up his own team to replace the juppeistes now installed at party headquarters. Handily, he will also be able to design the procedure for selecting a presidential candidate for 2007. He intends to reinvigorate the party, clean up its image, and turn it into a sort of think-tank that can refresh the political right. In short, Mr Sarkozy's UMP will be his personal campaign-team-in-waiting.

There are risks in all this for the ambitious Mr Sarkozy, however. One is that he will struggle, as UMP head, to sustain his gravity-defying popularity. At 54%, he comfortably beats other government figures, such as Dominique de Villepin (36%) and Jean-Pierre Raffarin (25%), the prime minister, according to TNS Sofres, a pollster. While in government, both at finance and, previously, at the interior ministry, Mr Sarkozy impressed voters with his hyperactive work rate and ability to make things happen, whatever the issue. The crime rate fell; prostitutes were driven from the streets; supermarkets agreed to drop prices; Alstom, an industrial firm, was saved from bankruptcy. At the UMP, he will have no such results to show off.

Second, Mr Sarkozy will have to tread a fine line between the obligations of loyalty and the temptations of independence. Mr Raffarin loaded a speech this weekend welcoming his finance minister's candidacy with nervous appeals for “loyalty”. “Tout sauf la division” (Anything but division) is the new rallying cry. Mr Sarkozy's response? He agreed in principle to support the government, but not through “constraint, habit, or discipline”.

This could spell trouble not only for the president but also for Mr Raffarin, whose credibility and, indeed, job have been at stake throughout the Chirac-Sarkozy struggle. Even under Mr Juppe, the UMP occasionally defied Mr Chirac: for instance, it is against Turkey's entry into the European Union, which the president supports. Under Mr Juppe's far less biddable successor, such clashes are likely to multiply. Although mindful of the risk that a split right might help the left, Mr Sarkozy's popular appeal depends heavily on his differences with the president.

All of which makes for uncertain policymaking ahead. Mr Sarkozy's own credibility as finance minister is waning. He made much of an agreement this week that he had secured from French insurance firms to invest a further €6 billion ($7 billion) in French private equity, to help stimulate small businesses and high-tech start-ups. Yet this measure, based on the curious assumption that such funds cannot spot good financial returns by themselves, is largely empty. It carries no means of enforcement and refers simply to a target of boosting such investment by 2007, by which time Mr Sarkozy will be gone.

As for his successor, not yet chosen, he is unlikely to have the same clout. Possibilities include Philippe Douste-Blazy, the health minister, and Franois Fillon, at education. But more likely may be Herve Gaymard, the 44-year-old farm minister and former junior finance minister, whose loyalty to Mr Chirac is absolute.

Furthermore, the presidential candidate-in-waiting may be even more tempted by shameless populism when outside government than he has been within it. As it is, Mr Sarkozy's economically liberal convictions have been tempered by the realities of French politics, where protectionism and interventionism are easy vote-winners. To popular acclaim, he bailed out Alstom, and pulled off a French private-sector drugs merger to fend off a foreign bid.

To the indignation of new EU members and the bafflement of others, Mr Sarkozy floated a proposal this week to deny EU regional aid to countries with low corporate-tax rates. Given fears of competition, this was an attempt to portray himself as protector of French jobs. Sadly, despite his demonstrated talent for confounding such misguided thinking by explaining, in lay terms, the harsh realities of a global economy, there may be more such appeals to populism in store.

Article discusses the consequences if Nicolas Sarkozy takes over as head of the Union for a Popular Movement (UPM) in France, President Chirac's Party.

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