Hollande faces the 'tabloidisation' of his private life
Today’s the day Francois Hollande gives only his third press conference from the gilded halls of the Elysee palace – his traditional new year’s greeting to the world’s media, when one can’t help thinking that the foreign press corps are the last people he would want to spend time with.
As per my last blog, France has entered uncharted territory with the president’s alleged affair – not with the affair itself, but because the French media have broken with the usual conspiracy of silence, both in breaking the story and then running with it prominently.
The first opinion poll has 77 per cent claiming the president’s private life should remain private, but delve deeper and you find much more ambivalence. In a country which abolished the monarchy, the French still look to their head of state to embody some kind of dignity – have an affair if you want to, but keep it secret at least.
Hollande’s apparent indecisiveness in economic policy – a tax-and-spend socialist hinting that he is about to adopt a more liberal pro-business approach – is in danger of being reinforced by the indecisiveness in his private life about which woman he wishes to be with.
There has been very little fuss made about the president’s refusal to marry either Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children, or the so called “First Girlfriend”, Valerie Trierweiler. Yet French taxpayers may understandably bridle if Ms Trierweiler continues to live at the palace with a staff of five when in fact the president’s current amour, an actress, is a brief scooter ride away.
My guess is that Hollande will try to preempt all questions about his private life with an opening statement and then do all he can to speak about the French economy. The media landed him in the soup, and he won’t want to be seen giving ground on his right to privacy while those who have taken away that right are in the same room.
Instead, he will move fairly quickly to clarify his living arrangements, but not today. Presumably when Ms Trierweiler is no longer in hospital where she is recovering from the shock of it all.
Are the French media enjoying this story? Well, not as much as you might think. I spoke to the editor of a satirical magazine yesterday. While his cartoonists were busy at work lampooning Hollande as a giant phallus wearing a helmet and riding a moped, the editor was bemoaning the tabloidisation of the highest office in the land and the focus on celebrity journalism rather than politics.
Are you becoming like Britain, I asked? I hope not, he sniffed.
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