G20 summit: live blogging

With his tough line before the G20 summit, Nicolas Sarkozy is playing world statesman, the only act that has served him well at home since his popularity dived soon after his election in 2007.

About 38 per cent of the public approve of Mr Sarkozy’s performance as President, but when pollsters ask how he represents France abroad, he scores up to 70 per cent. “Super-Sarko” is admired for the vigour with which he charges around world capitals, and especially for what was seen as his deft handling of his six months in the EU rotating presidency last year. He was given credit for persuading President Bush to stage the first G20 summit in Washington last November and he is claiming the paternity of its follow-up this week in London.

By casting himself, along with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, as the apostle of a new world financial order, Mr Sarkozy has abandoned the radical doctrines of deregulation that won him election and reverted to the classical French instinct for the paternal, dirigiste state.

G20: Meet the leaders

From the dour Scot to the glamorous power-dresser from Argentina

• G20 summit: get the action as it happens with our live blog

Multimedia

• Live blog: every protest and speech from the G20

• G20 Summit - your complete guide

• Interactive G20 map

BACKGROUND

• Danger of discord at Gordon's beanfest

• What do we want? Everything ... and now

• Global intelligence

Related Links

• Brown to bankers - follow advice you give your kids

• ANALYSIS: one huge security effort

• Obama keen to avoid sign of a snub

But he is risking a paradox when he picks a fight with les Anglo-Saxons – the ancestral adversary that has served French leaders as a foil for centuries. Yesterday, his aides lumped the “Anglo-Saxons” together as the problem in their pre-G20 briefing. (The term is standard in French for the white English-speaking countries.) But things are different now, not just because the Anglo-Saxon-in-chief is black. Mr Obama is also far more popular with the French public than their own President.

Libération, the left-wing newspaper, contrasted Mr Sarkozy unfavourably with the US President. “With his efforts to grapple with the crisis, Barack Obama is far ahead of his counterparts on the Old Continent,” wrote Laurent Joffrin, the editor. Mr Sarkozy and the rest of Europe’s leaders are showing dangerous divisions and reverting to old-fashioned conservative policies, he added.

Mr Sarkozy’s opponents agree that America is leading the way with the big-government spending that was long the preserve of France and the other European welfare states. He finds himself in a tricky position. Until the spat before the G20, he was strenuously wooing Mr Obama. He has returned France to the core of Nato and called France’s traditional anti-Americanism “that cultural cancer which prevents French diplomacy from working”.

Mr Sarkozy’s campagne de séduction got off to a poor start, though, when he dashed off a congratulatory letter on US election night only to misspell the new President’s name, writing “Barak” instead of “Barack”. Mr Obama has since sent an effusive letter to Jacques Chirac, Mr Sarkozy’s predecessor and bête noire. To great hilarity in France, the former President released the letter, which said: “I am certain that over the coming four years, we will be able to work together in a spirit of peace and friendship in order to build a better world.”

The letter, which referred to Mr Chirac’s present work for the environment, was gold dust for comedians such as Nicolas Canteloup, a morning radio impersonator. He imitated Mr Sarkozy telephoning Mr Obama: “Allo Barack, this is Nicolas . . . you know, Little Big Man ... You know, the husband of Carla Bruni, you know, the bombshell.”

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be