Is Sarko a sex dwarf—or just saving face?

Sarko and Carla: a bona fide pair of "hot rabbits"?

When 24-hour licensing was introduced in 2005, the government said it wanted Britain to imitate the “continental” drinking culture, where everyone sipped half-pints at café tables and the virtues of moderation were imbibed with spritzer at the age of five. That is a complete fable, says Jim Pollard in the forthcoming issue of Prospect, available on 25th March. The drift has been in the opposite direction: in Paris, le binge drinking est bien arrivé—and it’s because the French are increasingly imitating us.

It’s only the latest, Pollard says, in a long line of English imports ranging from pop records to corporate brands to street slang. And this shift is beginning to affect people’s private lives too, wrote Lucy Wadham in a previous issue of Prospect. When his last marriage to the long-suffering Cecile broke down, Nicolas Sarkozy was attacked over his lack of “pudeur” (a word part-way between shame and modesty) as he pandered to the press: an Anglo-American tactic that went against the grain of the Fifth Republic’s Catholic origins.

However, all the French coverage of the recent alleged Bruni/Sarkozy dalliances isn’t necessarily a sign of the French media becoming more like the British in its appetite for celebrity scandal. Rumours that Sarkozy’s liaison with his ecology minister has been invented to salvage his reputation as a “sex dwarf” (in the face of being cuckolded by his man-eating wife) point to an undiminished gulf between French and English attitudes to sex.

We have no concept of the chaud lapin: the very idea of a prime minister sleeping with a member of his cabinet would make English blood run cold. But for the French, such news can be bundled together with Bruni’s liaison as “extramarital affairs” as a face-saving measure. Meanwhile, the English-speaking internet resounds to a dwarf joke about Sarkozy that David Cameron made in September. We’re not identical yet.

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Sarkozy turns to Turner and Tobin

Will Sarkozy convince fellow leaders to adopt a Tobin tax?

It appears that Nicolas Sarkozy has taken a leaf out of Prospect’s book. Following last month’s interview with FSA chief Adair Turner, in which he described the City as “socially useless” and called for the introduction of a Tobin tax, there are now reports that Nicolas Sarkozy will urge fellow world leaders at next month’s G20 meeting in Paris to consider a Tobin tax on all financial transactions.

Speaking exclusively to Prospect for the September issue, Turner argued that reforms in the financial sector should be focused on excessive profits rather than excessive bonuses:

“If you want to stop excessive pay in a swollen financial sector you have to reduce the size of that sector or apply special taxes to its pre-remuneration profit. Higher capital requirements against trading activities will be our most powerful tool to eliminate excessive activity and profits. And if increased capital requirements are insufficient I am happy to consider taxes on financial transactions—Tobin taxes, after the economist James Tobin. Such taxes have long been the dream of the development economists and those who care about climate change—a nice sensible revenue source for funding global public goods. The problem is that getting global agreement will be very difficult…”

Indeed, while French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner has claimed that David Miliband is similarly in favour of a tax, it seems that others are less enthusiastic: Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel have voiced concerns about its practicality, and senior EU officials have described chances of international co-operation as “less than minimal.”

So can Turner’s idea work, or will reaching global agreement on this prove impossible? Read the interview and let us know your thoughts here.

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