LONDON, March 25: Britain welcomes Nicolas Sarkozy to London on Wednesday, curious about the new French president’s “anglo-saxon” reformist credentials — and fascinated by his glamorous new wife.
Sarkozy, on his first state visit since marrying Carla Bruni last month, is seen as a breath of fresh air after Gaullist Jacques Chirac — although there are signs that his honeymoon with the British press will be short-lived.
“Un Bon Ami” (A Good Friend) commented the Times newspaper — in French — as the headline of a recent editorial reflecting mood of British media coverage ahead of the two-day visit.
Sarkozy’s election last year was greeted as a chance to turn a page in Franco-British relations, long personified by the stormy relations between Chirac and former prime minister Tony Blair.
“Instinctively, the British people and the British press want to like Sarkozy. They like his frank speaking, his energy,” said John Lichfield, Paris correspondent of the British Independent daily.
Chirac’s image in Britain was never glowing, and became even worse when he led an anti-war bloc against the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq — not to mention denigrating British cuisine in overheard off-the-cuff remarks.
In contrast Sarkozy quickly underlined his backing for the deregulated economic model espoused by Britain and the United States, and pledging to reform a French system widely seen as corrupt and outdated in Britain.
“There was a view that he was going to be a more anglo-saxon compatible president. He was going to be much more liberal in his economic view, he was going to be possibly less flagrantly attached to European ideas than some previous French presidents,” Lichfield said.
But he warned that Sarkozy’s behaviour has raised some eyebrows, notably his “apparently boyish delight in his own position as president; his setting up of his new wife (and) his displaying of lofty friends.” “You have a sense that there are two men at work: one who is often impressive and one who lets himself down,” he said.
Another point which could endear him to British audiences centres on his efforts to bolster the French military contribution in Afghanistan, and his apparent interest in restoring France’s place in the Nato alliance.
On this front he is in stark contrast to Chirac, who refused point blank to send troops to post-war Iraq, and stood firm by General Charles de Gaulle’s 1966 decision to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command.
“Sarkozy is certainly much more sympathetically viewed at the moment,” said Roger Duclaud-Williams, an expert on Anglo-French relations at the University of Warwick in central England.
This was “both for the reasons of his foreign policy stands and because he seems to want to adopt a position in French domestic matters which is more sympathetic to the kind of line that’s been taken by” Britain, he said.
But rather than policy questions, it is Sarkozy’s personality and private life which have generated headlines in Britain.
