Sex will succeed where wars in Syria and the Central African Republic,questions of racial tension and the future of the European Union have all failed. It will persuade the world to do what it has so rarely done before – and tune into a press conference by the president of France.
The Westminster press corps is already joking that it might as well put its feet up this afternoon. David Cameron’s appearance before the House of Commons liaison committee is likely to be overshadowed by the main event in Paris, where François Hollande will face questions from the media. Journalists from the serious, establishment press will no doubt ask serious, establishment questions but someone, surely, will dare break what was for so long a taboo in the French media – and ask Hollande about his private life, specifically about last week’s revelations in Closer magazine of an alleged affair with the actress Julie Gayet. It may take a foreign reporter to do it.
Now if this were happening in, say, London or Washington the pre-event hype would have a single, clear theme: we would be saying that the embattled prime minister/president was fighting for his political life. His job would be deemed to be hanging by a thread. Some at least would be predicting resignation.
But this is France. So far the only political fallout from the Closer revelations has been a slight uptick in the opinion polls for the president. You read that right. Conforming to Gallic stereotype, French voters appear to think more of Hollande now that they know his bodyguard ferries him by motorcycle for alleged late-night trysts with his lover. His ratings have improved by two points. Meanwhile, the story has spawned a social media phenomenon: an online game in which players have to navigate the president, complete with motorcycle helmet, to his Julie.
Seeing that poll boost, The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon joked on Twitterthat Cameron’s political adviser Lynton Crosby is “focus-grouping the idea as we speak.” That’s funny because we know the opposite is true. Political consultants might boast that theirs has become a global business, with Australians like Lynton Crosby able to ply their trade in Britain, just as US guru Stan Greenberg has advised candidates in South Africa, Israel and Germany. These political wizards would doubtless insist that the fundamental rules of winning elections are near-universal, as applicable in Berlin as in Boston. But even they would admit that there are some areas where very great differences remain – with sex a prime example.
So if this was a US president rather than a French one facing the press today, his advisers would be insisting on complete honesty – no Clinton-style, wagging-finger pretence that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” – and total contrition. They would urge the president to say he was seeking spiritual counsel and that he was praying for the forgiveness and understanding of his wife and the American people.
God and prayer would not feature at an equivalent press conference in Britain. Instead, the traditional advice would be that a politician caught being unfaithful has only one course of action available: to announce that he is leaving his wife or partner because he has fallen in love with someone else. This, remember, was the ultimatum delivered to the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook, when his affair with his secretary had been revealed: announce your marriage is over or resign.
In France, there are other options. Hollande can seize the moral high ground, saying it is the press who should be ashamed for intruding on his private life, that he never chose to publicise his relationships (unlike his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy) and that France was a better place when it did not pry into the lives of others (unlike those prurient, curtain-twitching English). He could even go big picture and say that this is why the NSA scandal has so appalled people the world over: because the right to a private sphere is a sacred part of being human and that no one deserves to have that violated, not even a president.
In Britain such pomposity would bring howls of derision. Said in the White House, those words would bring calls for impeachment. But when it comes to sex and politics, no universal rules apply. In France, you might just get away with it.