Tony Blair can leave his job as Prime Minister with at least one cause for satisfaction: ‘Blairism’ has triumphed on this side of the Channel. And that is all to the good.

It is a triumph not of the content of future French policy (nobody here approves of Blair’s decision on Iraq) but of a new political approach. A younger, more modern style, a calculated, scientific use of the media, which means not just smiling in the studio but creating an event by being there on the spot and meeting the actors involved in the dramas and successes of our time. It means abandoning the post-war ideological ‘markers’ that did so much to delay old Europe’s adjustment to the new world. When Blair was formally received at the French National Assembly, he astounded the right and angered the left by calmly declaring that there is not a right-wing or left-wing economic policy, there is a policy that works and one that fails. As a socialist, he said, I choose the policy that works; then, as a socialist, I can distribute the fruits of success. It is also worth noting that he is more attached to moral values than to doctrine.

In all these areas, the two candidates in the second round of the presidential elections have proved good disciples of the British leader. The reason Nicolas Sarkozy finally carried the day was that he was better at learning and understanding the main lesson of New Labour’s electoral success: the first thing you must do is to win over your political party, modernise and rejuvenate that party from within and prepare in advance the policies to be pursued in all areas. The victory of the President of the UMP is a good example of…the value of hard work! Never since General de Gaulle had a candidate for the presidency prepared himself so well, not just for winning the election but also for doing the job. In confining herself to surfing over topical issues, improvising disparate and contradictory programmes, ostensibly suspecting her own party of being archaic, Ségolène Royal was playing poker against a grand master of chess.

Another innovation: the decision did not come from the centre. What came from the centre was more like indecision. At first François Bayrou caused surprise by wanting to get the right and the left to work together, then he surged in the polls by calling a plague on both their houses. Dazzled by the 18% of voters who supported him, he deduced that the French overwhelmingly rejected the left-right divide. That curious arithmetic simply disregarded the fact that, on the contrary, 82% of voters were quite happy with it. At the second round, he initially gave his supporters a free vote, then flirted with the left, then claimed he was independent, then whispered ‘anyone but Sarkozy’. Tired of trying to follow the constant shifts in direction of a compass that had lost its magnet, his own elected representatives then chose to support the candidate who had never swerved from his course. The election was decided not at the centre but by the people, just as Nicolas Sarkozy wanted. And Tony Blair hastened to Paris to be the first European to congratulate the man who had chosen him as his model.

The French have become citizens again and regained their power at the ballot box. Politics speaks the language of the new century. The best statesman of his generation has been voted into power, irrespective of their political persuasion, by workers, employees, small business owners and the middle class who had long despaired of making their voice heard. Political decisions guided by eternal common values – work, merit, authority, respect – instead of the old, defunct ideologies. There is still much to do. But, with or without global warming, the month of May 2007 holds out every promise of a genuine spring. At last!

Alain Lamassoure, 12 May 2007.