Madame la Présidente?

      Royal has challenged the hierarchical system of the male-dominated French left. Rather than wait around helping the ageing men who run the socialist party – “les éléphants” – she has attracted cult status and an army of devoted supporters of her movement, Désirs d’Avenir – “Wishes for the Future”. They tirelessly campaign for her unpaid, and believe that she alone can rescue France from the depression and glaring social inequalities of 12 years under President Jacques Chirac.

France certainly has problems. Youth unemployment is high, violent crime is rising and many fear that last year’s riots in the run-down, immigrant suburbs, where teenagers say racism ruins their lives, could rapidly erupt again. The centre-right presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, the charismatic interior minister, is making no secret of trying to appeal to far-right sympathisers with his tough position on immigration.

Royal’s huge popular support makes her seem the only Socialist capable of winning the presidential race. But the elephants will not go down without a fight. They say she is inexperienced, and her popularity cannot last. “It is going to be nasty,” admits one Royal supporter.

Like the last Socialist president, François Mitterrand, to whom she was once adviser, Royal is focusing on the provinces, touring the country’s regions and promising to shift power away from the Paris elite. In one village she so charmed more than 200 wine-makers who face losing their vines as Europe tries to drain its surplus wine-lake that the old ladies lined up to kiss her and have their photographs taken with her.

 “It’s all about the people,” she smiled between meetings in Bordeaux. I asked her what kept her going:

“My need to rise to the challenge of the trust that the people, the country, has given me.”

At the exclusive Ecole National d’Administration, training ground of the French ruling class, Royal was in the same class as the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. There, too, she met her partner, François Hollande. Later, she held ministerial positions for education, environment, family and childhood, while he became Socialist party leader in 2002. They have four children but have never married.

 For months, Royal was ridiculed for vaguely promoting family values and public morals instead of defining her political ideas. Now she is clarifying her vision to modernise France, but, like Mitterrand, she somehow manages to swing both right and left. She outraged the left by suggesting a form of military service for unruly teenagers and criticising the Socialists’ treasured 35-hour working week, yet she is strongly pro-trade union, and has promised to ban genetically modified food. An admirer of Tony Blair within a party that was always suspicious of him, she is nonetheless against the war in Iraq. “My diplomatic policy would not consist of going and kneeling in front of George Bush,” she has said.

 “I don’t think she always wanted to be president. I think she stood up because she had another message to give,” says MEP Gilles Savary, part of Royal’s inner circle. “The Socialist party in France has been a clique of men, cut off from the population. She’s not afraid to confront the taboos that the party once left alone, like security, crime, and France’s ghettoes.” Royal’s promise is to give the people a voice in a society where those in power have stopped listening to the street.

 Socialist rivals have criticised her for avoiding difficult issues. “What is the first measure you’ll take if you’re elected?” she was asked in Bondy, but she neatly sidestepped the question. Before she left, she promised the crowd, “Power won’t change me.” But many outside the Segosphere still wonder who Royal really is, and what won’t be changing.