Sarkozy’s allies blame Carla Bruni for low polls

Allies of French President Nicolas Sarkozy have blamed his "war-trophy" wife Carla Bruni for the low approval ratings that threaten his grip on power in regional elections next March. The situation is so serious that Sarkozy has asked Bruni to step back from public pronouncements on politics.

The president has suffered from a string of scandals in past weeks. They include allegations of nepotism in the appointment of the president’s 23-year-old son Jean as head of a powerful quango; Sarkozy’s support for Roman Polanski in his fight against extradition to the United States on charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl; and the row over revelations of his culture minister Frederic Mitterand's past as a sex tourist.

Sarkozy’s colleagues blame Bruni for the latter two incidents; she is widely assumed to have recommended Mitterand’s nomination as a minister to her husband. One, quoted by l'Express magazine, said Bruni was responsible for "most of the head of state's woes in this turbulent autumn".

Bruni - who was labelled the new Marie-Antoinette by Point de Vue magazine last week - is accused by members of Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party of having an undue political influence on the president.

"Nicolas is subjugated by a model wife who is richer than him and globally known and who constitutes a war trophy as she comes from the left," said one to l'Express. Another described the scene on a flight to New York for a meeting of the United Nations: "He remained with Carla for the entire flight. Two advisers were only allowed to interrupt him for a quarter of an hour."

Now a 'friend' of Bruni has been quoted by French website 20minutes.fr as saying Sarkozy "has asked her not to intervene on [political] subjects. And this doesn't bother her".

The revelation sheds further light on the virtual disappearance of Bruni from the public eye recently, which had led to speculation that she might be pregnant - a suggestion first propagated then flatly denied by Jacques Seguela, the businessman who introduced Bruni to Sarkozy.