Quote of the day

Having finished a somewhat admiring biography of Ségolène Royal (the things I do!) I returned to Nicolas Sarkozy's "Testimony". (Both books are published by Harriman House.)

Despite the admiring tone of much of the Royal biography I closed the book with the distinct and slightly queasy thought that almost anything will be better than her as French President.

Not that Sarkozy is exactly one's beau ideal but he does not seem to be as completely unscrupulous as she is. Occasionally one might even discern some glimmer of a principle.

Well, it's up to the French to decide though, of course, thanks to the European Union and our membership of it, the French President is a member of our governmentas well. However, I was rather taken by one paragraph in "Testimony" and thought that our miserable excuse for politicians could think about it quite carefully:

Those operating in politics must adapt themselves to new constraints, to new levers for action and create room for manoeuvre where they can. The conditions for the exercise of power change but not the aim, which remains action. The primary mission of a politician remains to give new hope by showing that it is possible to affect the course of events. So the impossible becomes possible and the inevitable not certain at all. It is too convenient to say that one can no longer do anything about anything, at the same time as standing for political office ... to do a job that apparently no longer exists!

There is, naturellement, a good deal of Gallic bombast here, even if Sarkozy is an "immigrant terrier". But that last sentence is worth pondering over.