The warring women on the frontline are giving politics a sharply feminine edge.
Valérie Trierweiler: giving France a delightful taste of personal strife Photo: AFP/Getty Images
9:28PM BST 13 Jun 2012
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The French, like most of us, love a catfight. When First Girlfriend Valérie
Trierweiler tweeted her support for the opponent of Ségolène Royal, the
rival she supplanted in the affections of President François Hollande, in
Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the entire nation sank with delight into
the bliss of watching the political become personal.
Barely a month ago, the day after her partner was elected President of the French Republic, Trierweiler confidently told Agence France Presse how much better suited to the job she was than her predecessor, Carla Bruni, Nicolas Sarkozy’s third wife. “Carla Bruni comes from a world entirely alien to politics: fashion, showbusiness. She doesn’t know its codes.” She, on the other hand, Trierweiler explained somewhat smugly, had been a political journalist for 20 years. “I know politics, I know the media.”
The woman many of the French are calling “Rottweiler” then illustrated the shortest way to link the words “pride”, “goeth”, “before” and “fall”. Nicolas Sarkozy had been kicked out of office chiefly for having paraded his private life with ostentation. Demurring that she would play “no political part whatsoever”, Trierweiler made it difficult to forget her existence for one minute. Whether she was bemoaning that she didn’t like the title “First Lady” and inviting the public to think up a new one, or insisting that she could remain a working Paris Match reporter “in all independence” while maintaining a staff and office at the Élysée Palace, she was hardly ever out of the news.
Scenting a rich vein, the political puppet show Les Guignols de l’info hastily recycled the puppet they’d used for Jacques Chirac’s spin-doctor daughter Claude, slapping on a new wig and redoing its make-up to rush their Valérie on air. They now portray Hollande as a bumbling, henpecked husband. Deferring to She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the President is depicted fleeing to the comforting arms of a softer, sweeter, more understanding female – Angela Merkel.
But in real life, the woman Trierweiler has been obsessing about for nearly a decade is Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner of 23 years and the mother of his four children. Trierweiler admits to having started her affair with Hollande in 2005. He was then Socialist Party leader; she had been covering the Left as a Paris Match political correspondent for years. But they’d met years before: it was a young Trierweiler who reported from Royal’s maternity ward after she gave birth to her and Hollande’s last child, Flora, in 1992. She’d remained friendly with Flora’s father ever since.
Royal, who had gradually become aware of her partner’s betrayal, kept silent until the night of her 2007 defeat against Nicolas Sarkozy. Then, minutes after the result, she announced that the doors of her house were “now closed to Hollande” – who, while still officially living with her, had in fact moved into Trierweiler’s flat. It transpired that Trierweiler had egged him on to sabotage Royal’s presidential bid during the campaign.
Having lost her bid for a second presidential try in last year’s Socialist primaries, Royal immediately gave her support to her children’s father. Meanwhile, Trierweiler went to absurd lengths to sideline her. In rallies, Royal found herself seated away from other party bigwigs, and excluded from pictures. The children, who also were involved with the campaign, tried to intervene with Hollande, but to no effect; instead he often remonstrated with his advisers that they should “support Valérie: she’s so insecure”. Royal was excluded from Hollande’s Élysée swearing-in, but he did give her his official support in her bid for the La Rochelle seat, in the region where she has been council president for eight years.
This infuriated Trierweiler and led to this week’s tweeting extremes, igniting the kind of nationwide ruckus which is still in full swing. She has dug her heels in, refusing to recant her tweet. Meanwhile, several former Royal adversaries, all women, including Socialist leader Martine Aubry and Green leader Cécile Duflot, have very loudly sided with her. “I hope this tweet gets [Royal] elected,” Aubry said yesterday.
Feminine solidarity is relatively new in France, in politics and elsewhere: it was really only seen last year, at the height of the Strauss-Kahn affair, when women politicians from Marine le Pen to a Trotskyite, including two then Cabinet ministers, denounced casual sexism and double standards. Earlier, Rachida Dati, Sarkozy’s glamorous justice minister, found relatively little support when she chose to become a single mother in office, then got sidelined partly because she’d been a friend of her boss’s second wife. But all signs are that Trierweiler’s latest outburst may have triggered unintended consequences. “You started missing Sarkozy, now you will miss Carla,” Nadine Morano, a former Sarkozy minister, tweeted yesterday.
© Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, 2012
Barely a month ago, the day after her partner was elected President of the French Republic, Trierweiler confidently told Agence France Presse how much better suited to the job she was than her predecessor, Carla Bruni, Nicolas Sarkozy’s third wife. “Carla Bruni comes from a world entirely alien to politics: fashion, showbusiness. She doesn’t know its codes.” She, on the other hand, Trierweiler explained somewhat smugly, had been a political journalist for 20 years. “I know politics, I know the media.”
The woman many of the French are calling “Rottweiler” then illustrated the shortest way to link the words “pride”, “goeth”, “before” and “fall”. Nicolas Sarkozy had been kicked out of office chiefly for having paraded his private life with ostentation. Demurring that she would play “no political part whatsoever”, Trierweiler made it difficult to forget her existence for one minute. Whether she was bemoaning that she didn’t like the title “First Lady” and inviting the public to think up a new one, or insisting that she could remain a working Paris Match reporter “in all independence” while maintaining a staff and office at the Élysée Palace, she was hardly ever out of the news.
Scenting a rich vein, the political puppet show Les Guignols de l’info hastily recycled the puppet they’d used for Jacques Chirac’s spin-doctor daughter Claude, slapping on a new wig and redoing its make-up to rush their Valérie on air. They now portray Hollande as a bumbling, henpecked husband. Deferring to She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the President is depicted fleeing to the comforting arms of a softer, sweeter, more understanding female – Angela Merkel.
But in real life, the woman Trierweiler has been obsessing about for nearly a decade is Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner of 23 years and the mother of his four children. Trierweiler admits to having started her affair with Hollande in 2005. He was then Socialist Party leader; she had been covering the Left as a Paris Match political correspondent for years. But they’d met years before: it was a young Trierweiler who reported from Royal’s maternity ward after she gave birth to her and Hollande’s last child, Flora, in 1992. She’d remained friendly with Flora’s father ever since.
Royal, who had gradually become aware of her partner’s betrayal, kept silent until the night of her 2007 defeat against Nicolas Sarkozy. Then, minutes after the result, she announced that the doors of her house were “now closed to Hollande” – who, while still officially living with her, had in fact moved into Trierweiler’s flat. It transpired that Trierweiler had egged him on to sabotage Royal’s presidential bid during the campaign.
Having lost her bid for a second presidential try in last year’s Socialist primaries, Royal immediately gave her support to her children’s father. Meanwhile, Trierweiler went to absurd lengths to sideline her. In rallies, Royal found herself seated away from other party bigwigs, and excluded from pictures. The children, who also were involved with the campaign, tried to intervene with Hollande, but to no effect; instead he often remonstrated with his advisers that they should “support Valérie: she’s so insecure”. Royal was excluded from Hollande’s Élysée swearing-in, but he did give her his official support in her bid for the La Rochelle seat, in the region where she has been council president for eight years.
This infuriated Trierweiler and led to this week’s tweeting extremes, igniting the kind of nationwide ruckus which is still in full swing. She has dug her heels in, refusing to recant her tweet. Meanwhile, several former Royal adversaries, all women, including Socialist leader Martine Aubry and Green leader Cécile Duflot, have very loudly sided with her. “I hope this tweet gets [Royal] elected,” Aubry said yesterday.
Feminine solidarity is relatively new in France, in politics and elsewhere: it was really only seen last year, at the height of the Strauss-Kahn affair, when women politicians from Marine le Pen to a Trotskyite, including two then Cabinet ministers, denounced casual sexism and double standards. Earlier, Rachida Dati, Sarkozy’s glamorous justice minister, found relatively little support when she chose to become a single mother in office, then got sidelined partly because she’d been a friend of her boss’s second wife. But all signs are that Trierweiler’s latest outburst may have triggered unintended consequences. “You started missing Sarkozy, now you will miss Carla,” Nadine Morano, a former Sarkozy minister, tweeted yesterday.
© Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, 2012
