Mary Dejevsky: Don't be fooled that Sarkozy will be good for us

No one in France can claim that Nicolas Sarkozy's election victory was compromised in any way: he won 53 per cent of the vote on an 85 per cent turn-out in a glitch-free poll. There are few national leaders - not Tony Blair, not Angela Merkel, not George Bush, and certainly not Gordon Brown - who can lay claim to so clear a mandate.

No one in France can claim either that they did not know what Sarkozy stood for before they voted for him. He was frank about the changes he wanted to bring to France, which is also why he inspired such impassioned opposition. The first protests erupted in the restive banlieues on Sunday night.

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Here in Britain, at least in official circles, le petit Napoléon has been a less divisive figure. His victory was predicted and prepared for. With New Labour and New Conservatives aiming for the same centre ground, both have cheerfully embraced Sarkozy as "one of us". At last, they chorus cheerfully (from opposite sidelines), here is someone who understands that France must embrace the modern world of free markets and movement. France's strengths, they add condescendingly - meaning its unrivalled productivity, its creativity and its chic - are such that it has nothing to be afraid of. Come on into our globalised world, they say, the churning water is lovely.

For an unpopular British government, of course, the prospect of Sarkozy-style change in France is a consoling thought. It helps to validate the fiscal and social policy choices made by New Labour. For David Cameron it holds out the prospect, were he to become Prime Minister, of an ally across the Channel with whom he could do business. That this might be business according to the narrowest of definitions, and very much on French terms, is not discussed. Unmentioned and perhaps not appreciated is that Sarkozy's programme reflects nothing more nor less than his perception of France's national interest.

Sarkozy wants to persuade the French to work longer hours, to get more young people into work and to reduce the indebtedness of the health system not only because these are desirable objectives in themselves, but because he thinks France will be stronger as a result. Why did Sarkozy visit Britain? Not to praise our system, lock, stock and creaking barrel, but to learn how some things - one-stop job centres and the recruitment of young professionals - could be more successful than they currently are in France.

Before the election, one of the hopes in Westminster appeared to be that Sarkozy would take a more "British" view of the EU, as a grouping of states in which national sovereignty nonetheless trumps everything. In fact, the President-elect has given little hint that he shares this view. He supports a "mini" version of the constitutional treaty (about which the British, unlike the Germans, are ambivalent) and he opposes membership for Turkey. In fact, beyond climate change and, probably, defence, it is hard to see how Sarkozy's arrival at the Elysée will make Britain look less like the EU's odd man out.

It is true that, through the campaign, Sarkozy stressed that he wanted France to be more open to the world. But he coupled this with a promise of more curbs on immigration and an acceptance that French (and European) workers feared unfair competition. If they had misgivings about the EU, he said, it was because they saw it as a "Trojan horse" for globalisation. This is not at all how the EU, or globalisation, are regarded by the British Government, which castigates the former for its rigidity and hails the latter as the future.

It is instructive, too, to weigh Sarkozy's past deeds against his words. As minister of finance and (twice) of the interior, he showed a canny ability to placate foreign critics, while simultaneously protecting French interests. The notion that he will suddenly become a committed globaliser, shattering trade barriers right and left, is fantasy.

Parliamentary elections in five weeks' time will determine how quickly and extensively Sarkozy will be able to proceed with his proposed reforms. But so will his constituency. A breakdown of Sunday's vote showed that, for a right-wing politician, he attracted an unusually large number of votes from blue-collar workers and the less well-off - those who might in the past have chosen the left or the far-right National Front.

And while they might have been drawn by his pledge of lower taxes for more work, greater attractions were surely the more conservative and nationalist aspects of his programme: law and order, immigration and workers' worries about globalisation. For the new President to renege on these pledges, however "modern" and cosmopolitan he might seem in Britain, would be little short of political suicide in France.

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