LEADING ARTICLE : France remains a divided nation

France is in the process of electing a president it does not really want. Despite Lionel Jospin's unexpectedly strong showing in the first round of voting yesterday, the Gaullists still look like winning the decisive second round of the presidential poll next month. But all indications are that a large majority of the French - more than two-thirds in one survey - do not want Jacques Chirac or Edouard Balladur to succeed Franois Mitterrand.

This ambivalence reflects deep uncertainty in a nation that likes to appear sure of itself in its dealings with the rest of the world. After the Socialist dream of the early Eighties had been punctured by tight monetary policies, high unemployment and social tensions, the key moment came with France's European referendum of 1992. On the surface the vote was about the Maastricht treaty: in reality it was a battle between modernisers and traditionalists, between those who welcomed the late 20th-century world, including Maastricht, and those who feared it. The progressives won a narrow victory, but the division of society, cutting across political lines, has been apparent throughout the Nineties.

Mr Chirac and Mr Balladur both think they can bridge the gap - and capitalise on the weakness of the Socialist Party after the later Mitterrand years - by appealing across the divide. If Mr Chirac emerges as the eventual winner, the Gaullist champion is a politician whose style far outweighs his substance. He may be showing a more left-wing side and presenting a calmer, presidential face to voters, but his working methods of 30 years have been the Bonapartist nationalist populism of an energetic grasshopper mind. It would be amazing if he underwent a character change at the age of 62. Mr Balladur, since he became Prime Minister in 1993, has not been impressive and has lacked the ability to arouse the nation during the presidential campaign.

The election of France's quasi-monarchical president is meant to be a moment of national stock-taking. This spring, France does not know where to turn, an uncertainty reflected in late exit poll forecasts. Its heart is not in this election, and that matters for its European partners as well as for France itself.

Particularly worrying is the high score predicted for Jean-Marie Le Pen. The National Front leader has now established himself as a durable force in French politics who can no longer be wished away as a temporary product of passing fears about immigration, law and order, and unemployment. He represents something considerably deeper, as could be seen from the decidedly non-extremist audiences he attracted during the campaign.

Mr Le Pen will make his influence felt on the new president. This may add force to the insecure side of France's national character as it faces the late 20th-century world. That could have important consequences for France's European partners as well as for the nation itself.

With a significant portion of the Gaullist party espousing Euroscepticism - and with anti-European pressure from the 20 per cent who voted for the far-right, this could well lead the new French government to feel obliged to strike poses and pick quarrels for nationalist reasons in its dealings with the European Union.

A tub-thumper in France will encourage tub-thumpers here, too.