 4.9m immigrants in France, many of whom live in the country's 750 suburban ghettoes.
Under President Chirac, France has wasted the past 12 years both politically and economically. While Germany is now roaring back after years in the doldrums and the painful reforms of 2003, France is yet to take the scalpel to its own diseased economy.
But, as any visitor to France will tell you, there is another story, one told in chapters which last longer than a presidential mandate. It is a story of unchanging national character, land cultivated over centuries, and a society which evolves at its own pace, not Germany's, Britain's or Spain's. To the outside eye, striking teachers might seem a problem. To the sanguine Frenchman, they are as reassuring as la cuisine de grande-mere.
General de Gaulle often pointed out that the real story of 1968 was not the student riots at the Sorbonne, but the march of housewives along the Champs Elysees which followed. Throughout history, the glamour of the revolutionaries has concealed the quiet
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Nicolas Sarkozy is reaching for the far-right with a sinister-sounding Ministry of Immigration and National Identity |
|
|
passion of France's conservatives.
During this presidential election, the two leading candidates are becoming desperate. Sarkozy (left) is reaching out to the far-right with promises of a sinister sounding Ministry of Immigration and National Identity.
Royal, meanwhile, has been forced to quell an internal party rebellion by reattaching herself to the barely reconstructed Marxists who make up the Socialist Party base.
All of this is excellent news for Bayrou and the 'tractor set' as they march in their muddy boots on Paris. While others bemoan France's economic decline, they can point to the latest news from the wine and spirits sector, France's second-largest export industry. After some glum years and fierce competition from the New World, exports were up 12.9 per cent last year.
It has been a remarkable turnaround for French wine, so recently attacked as unfashionable and in decline. It is one the rest of the country, under suitably unfashionable, unflappable - yet internet-savvy - leadership, might imitate. 
FIRST POSTED MARCH 21, 2007
|
