Leading article: A listless nation, an uncertain electorate

Tsar Paul I once said that "the only important person in Russia is the man I am talking to; and he is only important for as long as I am talking to him". Thankfully no contemporary head of state in western Europe today wields power on that scale. But the post of President of France is probably as close as one gets, uniquely combining the elective and monarchical principles.

It makes the muddled air of the presidential campaign, now moving into its final week, puzzling. The fact that France is in a funk over its economy, identity, the banlieues, its place in the world, the future of the language - the list is endless - ought to have injected more urgency into the campaign as the three front runners, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royale and Francois Bayrou slug it out. Instead, while voter registration is up compared to 2002, the French seem listless and reluctant to commit. Two in five have yet to make up their minds.

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Why an election that has decisive consequences for France and Europe has failed to electrify the voters, let alone produce an obvious winner, may be down to a couple of factors. One is the expectations raised by the post itself. The French presidency, as it now stands, is not an ancient institution but was tailored to fit the majestic profile of Charles de Gaulle. His long tenure raised distinct expectations that Jacques Chirac, for all his lack of substance, has somehow satisfied.

The problem with the current front-runners is that none quite measures up to a position that demands an effortless, instinctive grandeur as well as a regal ability to present oneself as in control but above the fray. M. Chirac, though a man of the right, has been very good at projecting this quality of Olympian distance from petty partisan concerns.

M. Sarkozy, it has to be said, has not. Tainted in the left's eyes for his confrontational approach to the riots in the banlieues, he is now a divisive candidate. Should he win, he might end up politically paralysed by the need to live down his intemperate remarks.

But if M. Sarkozy has problems in his camp, by sounding a little too shrill for the liking of many conservatives, Mme Royale has no less trouble in the tents of the left. The initial enthusiasm surrounding her candidacy as an outsider and a woman has long since evaporated, leaving a feeling that her grasp is uncertain. In a country where the political left is known for its taste for abstract ideas and ideology, she seems curiously deficient. An Almost Blairite play on the need for "values" has not quite filled this gap.

The idiosyncracies of France's political system mean of course that the ultimate winner might be none of the above but M. Bayrou, now trailing in third place. In a run-off with Sarkozy, he would triumph by scooping the votes of the left as well as the centre if the polls are anything to go by. Whether France would benefit from having a president with no major party behind him remains to be seen. He can also hardly be said to represent the radical break with the policies of managerial centrism and left-right "cohabitation" that many believe have brought France to a stalemate.

From our side of the channel, we must resist the temptation to cheer selectively from a calculation that any of the three shares Britian's view of Europe and the world. While much has been made of Sarkozy's Atlanticism, as president he might prove the most Gaullist, or anti-British, of them all.

The fact is, to borrow an American phrase, "we have no dog in this fight". Our interest is the same as that of the French electorate; that whoever wins, leads France out of its current doldrums. That much is certain; a weak and unhappy France will be no easier partner for Britain than its exact opposite.