A new lease of life for Ségolène Royal's election campaign

"She gave a fluent , competent performance, scoring points for compassion, for marathon smiling and for grasp of the arcane details of the country's social welfare, education and health systems", comments John Lichfield, the paper's Paris correspondent. He considers, however, that reaction in the press has kept her score down in opinion polls. «If Mme Royal has failed to turn the tide, support for her might ebb rapidly to far-left candidates and to the advancing centrist candidate Françios Bayrou. .... M. Bayrou is a pro-European consensus politician, who talks straight without saying very much. He may, for a while, attract votes from Royal supporters and centre-right voters, fearful that a Sarkozy landslide might encourage him to attempt wholesale reform of the state and economy".

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