Vox cani

Well I've long been a bit of an ardent of old Sarkozy, though without taking a political position in support or not, but having ended up suggesting over at Chris's that I might volunteer, I fear I now have no choice but to take up the Sarkozy watch baton. Having that pic above appear almost immediately when I was wondering whether or not to give this a go, the choice was made for me. So here we go...

What's going on? Well, as France-Echos would have it, "Sarkozy gonzales" has been daytripping down South to Perpignan (where I have a good friend, incidentally) in response to riots. He's had a rather inspired idea, that the state won't tolerate any violence. He's shoring up his populist credentials with some nice, lock 'em up talk, of crackdowns and prison, and they're helping us to take this all seriously by suggesting nicknames like "l'homme de fer" (the man of iron). At least it's not carbonised....

Why would he need to? Well he is the man of action, as we can tell from the pic, and it looks like he has some way to go to shore up the Tebbitt vote, having rather notoriously argued for positive discrimination in aid of Arabic names... "Le fils de [The son of] Mohamed et de Latifa doit être aidé davantage que [must be helped before] le fils de [the son of] Cécilia et Nicolas". You have to respect that sort of boldness; or alternatively you can claim that in the country of the tournantes, he's managed to make the French second-class citizens...

And the final flourish? Our author asks Sarkozy for his ex-wife's phone number. If Paxman gives up, I would love to see that sort of question on Newsnight...