So Nicolas Sarkozy’s smashing electoral triumph is not the clear blessing that France’s partners originally thought. True, his victory did usher the lamentable Jacques Chirac off the world stage and keep Ségolène Royal and her Socialists from taking the French economy forward into the 19th century. True, too, President Sarkozy has shown that a French leader can exit smiling after a visit to No 10, and make it sufficiently clear he finds America a rather attractive country to put an end to “freedom fries” in congressional dining rooms and references to “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” by Americans reacting to Chirac’s unalloyed anti-Americanism.

We Anglo-Saxons will cheer the domestic reforms that the new French President will ram through to cut unemployment and enable France to contribute to world growth. He intends to cut taxes (so-called social charges) that have stifled the growth in jobs and raise taxes on consumption, perhaps by increasing value-added taxes a thumping five percentage points to 24.5 per cent. Inheritance and wealth taxes are to be chopped and Sarkozy will undercut the rules prohibiting workers from toiling more than 35 hours each week by exempting earnings from overtime work from taxes and social charges.

Throw in plans to require workers to provide a minimum level of public services during strikes and it is easy to picture Margaret Thatcher smiling at the prospect of a new convert. Sarkozy wants most of these changes in place by August, when students are too eager to get to the beaches to riot in the too-hot streets of Paris.

The Muslims in the slums surrounding Paris and in other cities – the racaille, to use Sarkozy’s scornful term – are unlikely to see any near-term advantages and will be infuriated by Sarkozy’s plan to make it more difficult for foreigners to come to France to join immigrant relatives already there – about 100,000 residency permits are issued to family members of immigrants and only 14,000 to foreigners arriving on work visas. Nor are they likely to applaud his programme of stepped-up deportation and if he adds to that the promised toughening of minimum sentences for repeat offenders, he might find his moves tested in the streets, with cars ablaze. Some think this is a confrontation for which the new President devoutly hopes, giving him the opportunity to display the equivalent of Margaret Thatcher’s show of macho when dealing with the coalminers and the Argentines and mimic Tony Blair’s burnishing of his reformist credentials in his Clause Four moment.

So far, so good. But in my private meeting with Sarkozy, arranged by him before the election to discuss labour and product market reforms, I came away with a distinct impression that this is a man every bit as devoted to shielding France from foreign competition as any traditional protectionist, and one not exactly a believer in free markets. He repeatedly used the word “rupture” to describe what he had in mind – a rupture with the past, a change in attitudes that will elevate work over leisure, a politics that changes things rather than preserves the status quo.

I had the sense, however, that the “rupture” was to be something short of the “revolution” that might be required to make France, home to some world-class large companies, truly competitive in a world in which thrusting entrepreneurs are the biggest job creators and young people can hop across the Channel in pursuit of opportunities.

Sarkozy’s insistence that protection and subsidisation of France’s unpoor farmers must remain untouched, even if that means the failure of the Doha Round, can be dismissed as a necessity of French political life. But his calls for tax harmonisation to force low-tax EU countries to raise rates to French levels, his desire to increase the French State’s stake in Airbus, his intention to create a national energy champion by merging Gaz de France and Suez, his plan to shield important French companies from foreign takeovers add up to dirigisme, not reform.

These are core beliefs, not subject to argument. Any doubts on that score were dispelled when Sarkozy led what appears to be at least a semi-successful move to have the new EU constitution – oops, treaty – stripped of its pro-competition language. “Competition . . . is no longer an objective of the Union . . . the word protection is no longer taboo.” Moreover, Britain’s insistence on retaining its pound imposes “social, environmental, fiscal and monetary dumping on Europe”.

All of which raises an interesting question for Gordon Brown, a free-trader but eager to have reasonably good relations with Sarkozy, the second world leader to congratulate him on his move from No 11 to No 10 (Bush was the first). The new Prime Minister’s desire to live down his (well-deserved) anti-EU reputation may explain why he has claimed credit for the deal by which a new EU foreign minister (“What does it matter what we call him?” said Sarkozy) will supersede Britain in the world’s councils. This toadying to the EU superstatists was once reserved for Tony Blair, while Brown berated his finance minister colleagues and pressed for market-oriented reforms that his French, German and other counterparts found a bridge too far into the 21st century.

Now it is Brown who wants the approbation of Sarkozy and friends. Which has him disingenuously insisting that the new treaty marks no reduction of British sovereignty and therefore there is no need for the referendum that he and his party promised in the event of something like the creation of a permanent European presidency, or of a foreign minister in all but name, or of a legal personality for the EU, permitted to negotiate treaties on Britain’s behalf.

Game, set and match to Sarkozy, who claims that the new constitution “was France’s idea from the start”. This is a charismatic politician on the make, one who has every intention of rallying support for the construction of walls against further globalisation, politicising the European Central Bank and driving tax rates up throughout the EU – setting up a Brown-Sarkozy confrontation that will outlast the recent pleasantries. It is ironic that the Prime Minister’s principal ally in his pro-competition battle with Sarkozy is one Peter Mandelson.

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