Manuel Valls, France’s new prime minister and until Monday the country’s tough-talking “top cop”, has been likened to two politicians – Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy, reports The Telegraph in this profile.
Neither comparison has enamoured him to the unreconstructed French Left, but it has had to swallow its distaste, as the square-jawed 51-year-old is by far the most popular member of François Hollande’s government.
He was also the most popular choice to replace Jean-Marc Ayrault.
A recent survey for Elle magazine suggested that 20 per cent of French women would happily have a “torrid affair” with the twice-married Mr Valls. Far from offended, his current wife, the glamorous violinist Anne Gravoin, said she was “delighted” with the poll.
Mr Valls’s rise has drawn comparisons with Nicolas Sarkozy, another young, dynamic interior minister who would go on to become French president.
Like Mr Sarkozy, he is something of an outsider. The Barcelona-born son of a Catalan artist obtained French nationality only at the age of 20 and did not attend the elite ENA university that churns out much of the French political elite.
He was elected mayor of the tough multicultural Paris suburb of Evry in 2001 and to the National Assembly a year later. After winning only six per cent in the Socialist primaries to run for president in 2011, he became Mr Hollande’s campaign spin doctor and was said to be close to Valérie Trierweiler. After his nomination as interior minister, he maintained the Sarkozy government’s controversial policy of dismantling camps belonging to Roma migrants from eastern Europe, to the horror of many on the Left.
Like Mr Sarkozy, he knows how to work the media, rushing to the southern port of Marseille after recent killings in the crime-ridden city and promising to boost police resources.
But his most contentious move came last September when he said the majority of Roma migrants living in France should be “sent back to the borders” because they could not assimilate.
Comparisons with Mr Blair arise from Mr Valls’s vocal reformism. He has in the past condemned the 35-hour working week and at one point even suggested the word 'Socialist' be dropped from his party’s name.
Read more of this report from The Telegraph.