Chirac launches Bastille Day attack on 'poor' Britain

After weeks of criticism from Britain - and within France - on the high-spending French "social model", President Chirac used his traditional 14 July television appearance to launch a tit-for-tat attack on the UK.

"I don't think that the British model is a model that we should copy or envy," he said. "Certainly unemployment [in Britain] is less than our own, substantially less. But if you look at the important elements in society, from health policy to the struggle against poverty, we are much better placed than the British."

Reeling off a string of pre-prepared figures, M. Chirac said that France spent 5.6 per cent of its GDP on education, compared to 4 or 4.2 per cent in Britain. On scientific research, he said, France spends 2.2 per cent of its GDP and Britain only 1.8 per cent.

The number of children living below the poverty line in Britain had been officially counted as 17 per cent, M. Chirac said. The equivalent figure in France was 7 per cent. "So I do not envy [Britain]," M. Chirac said, during a one-hour live television interview to mark France's national day.

On this occasion, he did not repeat his recent observations on the short-comings of British cuisine.

President Chirac's remarks were a direct response to suggestions by Mr Blair and Gordon Brown that high unemployment in France (10 per cent) and other Continental countries was the result of a failed social model of high state spending and rigid labour laws. Mr Blair has suggested that this largely explained the disenchantment with the European Union which led to the recent rejection of the proposed EU constitution in France and the Netherlands.

The Blair theme has been taken up, sympathetically, by the French press and, provocatively, by Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister. M. Sarkozy - who sees himself as M. Chirac's successor after 2007 - said last weekend that French politicians should show the courage displayed by Margaret Thatcher and Mr Blair and take unpopular decisions for the long-term good of the country.

M. Chirac was therefore settling two scores yesterday. He was responding to a string of what the French press has called "victories" by Mr Blair - over the EU budget and the unsuccessful Paris Olympics bid. The areas of attack chosen by M. Chirac - education, health, research, poverty - are all pet Blairite issues.

British officials said M. Chirac's figures were based on a "partial reading of the statistics" and they failed to take account of the much-increased spending on education and health since Mr Blair came to power in 1997.

M. Chirac, who is on the political centre-right, was also, in effect, siding with most of the political establishment of the left and centre in France in rejecting M. Sarkozy's flirtation with the British social model.

By doing so he hoped to contradict opinion polls and critics - including M. Sarkozy - who suggest that the referendum defeat has left him with two years as a humiliated, lame-duck president.

Asked by his interviewers if he would contemplate running for a third term. M. Chirac said it was "up to the French people to decide" how long presidents should stay in office. He said he would make his own decision "when the time comes".