In a televised debate Mme Royal, 53, who holds an easy lead in the race for the Socialist party nomination on November 16, slapped down charges from her two rivals that her plans for France smacked of populism. “We should not be afraid of the people,” she said. Asked if popular panels should supervise cabinet meetings, she replied: “Yes”.

Mme Royal said that her ideas for citizens’ panels would reconnect the French with a discredited political class. Her proposals, made last weekend, have provoked a furore on Left and Right, with opponents and party rivals accusing her of trying to revive the bloody methods of the French Revolution, Soviet Russia and the China of Mao Zedong.

In their second national debate Mme Royal’s opponents, Laurent Fabius, a former Prime Minister, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former Finance Minister, accused her of playing to the lowest common denominator. “This is a kind of populism that plays into the hands of the extreme Right,” M Fabius said. He was alluding to the challenge from Jean-Marie Le Pen, the veteran leader of the far-right National Front, who is campaigning again for the presidential election next April. M Strauss-Kahn, who has been winning increasing support from Socialist Party members, said that Mme Royal’s ideas for “direct democracy” would cause “a dangerous conflict for democracy.”

However, Mme Royal stuck to her guns, yielding no ground under the onslaught of the party heavyweights who see her as a lightweight who is usurping the role of Socialist champion. Her confident performance helped to repair a growing feeling inside her own camp that she was damaging her campaign with impromptu ideas that have not been thought through. Opponents are using what they see as her gaffes to depict her as impetuous and dictatorial.

Last night Mme Royal’s Socialist rivals tried to make the most of her blunders, which have included declaring that she had no particular view on the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

M Strauss-Kahn has been winning support in the party by contrasting experience in office with Mme Royal’s limited record as a former junior minister and president of Poitou- Charentes, a small region.

Le Figaro, the conservative newspaper, said that Mme Royal was showing her true colours as a hardline, authoritarian leftist. Her citizens’ jury sounded like the workers’ soviets of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, it said.

The campaign from Left and Right to dent the extraordinary charm that Mme Royal exerts on public opinion has so far shown only minor effect, with her ratings dropping a couple of points in the past fortnight. But her party rivals make no secret of their doubts that she has the stamina, or stature, for a campaign against Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing Interior Minister. Party elders are worried that the left-wing vote in the first presidential round next spring could again fragment among several candidates as it did in 2002. That year M Le Pen eliminated Lionel Jospin, the Socialist, in the first round.

M Le Pen, 78, who is campaigning hard once again, predicted yesterday that he would break through in 2007. He was enjoying record public support of about 20 per cent, he claimed. Pollsters always have difficulty measuring M Le Pen’s potential vote because people are reluctant to admit to supporting him.

• The Government fixed Sunday, April 22, 2007, as the date for the first round of the presidential election, with the second-round decider two weeks later, on May 6. Elections for a new National Assembly — the lower house of parliament — will follow on Sundays, June 10 and 17. (AFP)

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