I’ve been spending much time in France for 14 years now but I still can’t figure out French voters.
They elected my friend François, presumably because they like his promised policies. We’ll leave aside the question of how anyone with an IQ above room temperature (centigrade) could possibly fail to see that the policies were asinine and subversive. That’s not the point.
The point is that, as president, François proceeded to do exactly as he had promised – with entirely predictable results. The French economy is rapidly descending to the level of England’s c. 1975.
One would think the French should be happy: they’ve got what they voted for. “Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin,” as Molière wrote, which can be loosely translated as “You’ve made your bed, you lie in it.”
Yet against all logic the French turned against pauvre François within weeks into his presidency. His popularity rating instantly dropped way below Pierre Laval’s after his execution for treason, or so it seems.
But you have to hand it to François – he has found a way to fight, or rather shag, his way out of trouble. Defying logic yet again, the current scandal has actually made him more popular, or rather less unpopular. Not by much, but still.
If before one had to question the intelligence of French voters, now one has to doubt their taste. For, rather than being a slightly naughty but piquant ménage à trois, the whole affair is but a sleazy reminder of what’s wrong with French, or more broadly Western, modernity.
First, the very presence of Valerie Trierweiler as First Lady is obscene. French media unkindly refer to Valerie as the Rottweiller, in homophonic reference either to her aggressive nature or to her amorous preferences, I’m not sure which.
Yet no one had ever questioned her status, or indeed the €1,000,000 she costs French taxpayers every year, until my friend François played away from home. This shows what 100-odd years of laïcité has done: the French no longer perceive any valid difference between marriage and cohabitation.
No wonder that 56 percent of French children are born out of wedlock: family can now be defined in any which way, usually to exclude the father. A fine achievement, that, but the French shouldn’t rest on their laurels: we’re catching up with them fast.
It has to be said that François has made his own modest contribution to this statistic: he produced four children in 30 years with his fellow socialist Ségolène Royale, without ever popping the question.
Enough is enough, decided François after Ségolène failed in her own bid for the presidency. Out went the loser, in came the Rottweiler who, upon François’s ascent to the Elysée, became more royal than Royale.
Now François co-stars in the tasteless spectacle being played out before a drooling public, although the Rottweiller has managed to upstage him.
When she allegedly found out about his affair with the actress Julie Gayet, that is after the rag Closer blew the whistle on it, the Rottweiller took a finely judged overdose of pills, enough to put her into hospital but not enough to do much harm.
It’s true that the wife, or in this instance the mistress, is always the last to find out, but this is ridiculous. Le tout Paris has known about this affair since it began in 2011, before François’s electoral triumph.
I knew about it, and God knows even London gossip usually passes me by. In this instance, I found out a few months ago from a friend who owns an exclusive Paris shop patronised by all the president’s women.
I can bet my house against your pint that the Rottweiler, who’s friends with every gossip journalist in France, knew about the hanky-panky from the word aller.
She clearly didn’t mind – for as long as she continued to receive that million’s worth of perks and have her picture taken with heads of state. It’s only after the exposure threatened her unwarranted status that the Rottweiler decided to make a last stand.
François, on the other hand, has demonstrated yet again what we already know: our ‘leaders’ everywhere act as if they’re above all considerations of taste, decency or indeed legality. They lie through their teeth to us, so why not to their women? At least those in Anglophone countries are usually more discreet.
A couple of American presidents were involved in sex scandals too. But they were never photographed sneaking around Pennsylvania Avenue wearing an oversized motorcycle helmet and riding a Vespa.
Their girls were delivered to them, suitably camouflaged, at the White House and then ushered out post-coitally. When the news of such dalliances broke, the presidents looked immoral but never ridiculous. By contrast, François, the unlikely penile jockey, comes across as an unfunny dirty joke.
Meanwhile the new First Squeeze Julie Gayet went into hiding, content to be appearing on the cover of Elle magazine above the headline Une passion française. To keep herself in the news during her widely publicised absence, she has sued Closer for breach of privacy.
This seems like a logical thing to do, but the amount Julie wishes to claim in damages is suspiciously low: €50,000. What happened to those seven-figure tort suits for which modernity is so justly famous?
Well, you see, €50,000 is a small enough claim to be settled quietly. Had Julie demanded her seven figures, the case would have gone to court and all sorts of interesting details would have come out.
Even in a permissive France that would have spelled the end of François’s tenure, and there would have been no point in supplanting the Rottweiler (somehow one doubts that Julie’s love is wholly disinterested). Smart girl, Julie, which is further proved by the judiciously leaked rumours of her pregnancy.
Seems like François is about to boost the statistic of illegitimate births, which is easier to do than making those economic indicators curve upwards for a change.
What a sorry lot politicians are. What a sorry time we live in. Alas, we’re powerless to change either.
My new book How the Future Worked is available from www.roperpenberthy.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk and the more discerning bookshops.