It’s an ideological cliffhanger, this French presidential election, and it will, more than any other recent European poll, affect the political future of Europe. Its two principal candidates are separated by a gulf wider than any seen in British politics for many years.

This election is a clash of personalities. In the Right corner is Mr Nasty, Nicolas Sarkozy, the pugnacious outsider and UMP candidate, the immigrant’s son who called rioting unemployed teenagers “rabble” and threatened to hose them down. Facing him in the Left corner is the Prim Princess, Ségolãne Royal, the middle-class army officer’s daughter and graduate of ENA. Ségo, as she is known in France, mouths warm leftist slogans so platitudinous that she enrages even her Socialist Party colleagues for her lack of intellectual coherence, but she mines a deep seam.

In the middle sits François Bayrou, the UDF candidate, a man whose platform is stunningly dull but nevertheless catches voters who wish to flee the socialist quagmire but fear the free-market flames of Mr Sarkozy. Out on the far Right is Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the National Front, whose popularity is feared greatly. Opinion poll suggest that he could get 15 per cent of the vote and Sarko has been pandering with speeches about national identity.

Dig beneath the speeches and blogs and the contest is more interesting than soap-box gladiators; it is a struggle for the soul of France’s middle class.

For British visitors, France is a puzzle. It looks pleasant, even prosperous. It has fast trains and grand public buildings and, at the same time, sustains an army of unemployed, a bloated public sector, a 35-hour working week and a lavishly funded health service. We know, instinctively, that the lifestyle is unsustainable and the cracks in the edifice of the socialist state are beginning to appear amid mounting alarm about the cost of healthcare and France’s pensions timebomb. But this election is about more than tinkering with public-sector funding. It is about what the State is for.

To put it bluntly, it is about who the French State supports. In his book, Testimony, Mr Sarkozy thumps the tub for the middle class, who should be “at the heart of all policy”.

The middle class are “always rich enough to pay taxes, never poor enough to receive help”, says Sarko. They have lost confidence in getting a good job and in owning their own home. It’s the same message la dame de fer delivered to British electors almost four decades ago, but it rings different bells in France.

The difference is that French socialism was built to protect France’s middle class and not to rescue its poor. The economic interventionism, the nationalised industries, the lifetime employment laws are the bulwarks of the pleasant society that was enjoyed by a generation of France’s middle class since the War and which is still on view today. Unfortunately, the cost of it has nearly bankrupted the country, sent intellectual and financial capital fleeing to Britain and America, leaving behind a class of disaffected and dejected boys and girls clutching useless diplomas.

Some took to the streets in 2006, protesting against a government attempt to create a few new jobs by loosening labour laws, a policy quickly abandoned. The youngsters believe that the pleasant society was built for them by their parents, that a cushy job in France Télécom is theirs by right and ask: “How dare they cancel these privileges, now it is our turn?” When Ségo defends the 35-hour week, condemns the precariousness of globalisation and promises a “right to work” for the young, she is not speaking to immigrant kids in suburbs — they will never get jobs inside the walls of the French socialist fortress. She is speaking to the frustrated, fearful, middle-class graduates.

To whom will the French middle class listen? Ségo offers a cushion, but the fabric looks threadbare and the stuffing lumpy. Sarko would scrap the cushions and send you on your bike. Ségo’s promises of job security for all look empty — but it would be wrong to see France as if it were Britain on the cusp of Thatcherism. The British never believed that the State could solve all their problems. Small wonder that Sarko is looking abroad to those who have left France to build up his stock of votes.

Germany’s church tax offers a lesson

The German Catholic Church is enjoying a little boom. Attendance at Mass on Sunday is not growing, sadly, but church finances are looking very healthy thanks to a surge in revenue from church tax, which could reach €4.5 billion (£3 billion) this year, up €500 million on 2005.

In Germany, the State levies a tax on church members, deducting automatically from pay packets between 8 to 9 per cent, which is paid directly to the relevant ecclesiastical treasury. Church tax has been a recruiting searjeant for the secular society. Since 2000, 680,000 Catholics have officially left the fold, refusing to pay the tax and thereby forgoing the right to receive sacraments. Better economic times for Germans have only just redressed the fall in church income.

There is no doubt that church tax is unpopular in Germany, but it might be a way round a problem in Britain, where many resent taxpayer-funding of church schools. Why not ask churchgoing parents to put their money where their faith lies. Remove direct state funding of faith schools and simply tax the parents of faith-school pupils?

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