Alone in a floodlit boxing ring, Ségolène Royal wound up her fans like the champ before the final bout. “They call me soft, eh? You know me — that’s not my thing.” The crowd of 4,000 in the sports arena in Tours roared and chanted: “Ségo, Présidente!”

The Socialist candidate for the Elysée Palace beamed back the smile that won over France before doubt set in last January and she was overtaken by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right favourite.

Mr Sarkozy had dared on Wednesday to call Ms Royal soft on crime after she attacked the former Interior Minister for harsh police tactics in a youth riot in the Paris Gare du Nord station.

In the final stretch before the first round of the election on April 22, Ms Royal was in Tours on a jaunt through the Loire Valley doing what she does best: preaching her vision of feminine redemption for a nation in crisis.

Pugnacious and confident, Ms Royal, 53, is enjoying a lift since she pushed out the Socialist party barons a fortnight ago and reverted to the very personal style that worked magic last year. “Je suis la patronne” — “I am the boss”, she said this week. “I will be responsible for the outcome. I will hold no one else responsible.”

According to a BVA poll yesterday, Ms Royal has pulled almost level with Mr Sarkozy, with 27 per cent voting intentions for the first round. Mr Sarkozy, leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, is at 28 per cent and François Bayrou, the centrist who is Ms Royal’s most immediate threat has fallen to 20. Mr Sarkozy would still win easily in a run-off with Ms Royal, according to the poll.

Ms Royal’s team say that the polls are out of date and that she has the wind in her sails as she focuses on medium-size rallies and encounters with voters.

Always cutting a solitary figure, she is avoiding speech-making, which she does poorly, in favour of her trademark inspirational talks. She urges citizens to join in forging an ordre juste — a fair, orderly, society.

This, she says, will create a new, “win-win” consensus that will restore morale and prosperity after 12 morose years under President Chirac.

She has also been working on her image with magazine spreads of 282 Boulevard Saint Germain, the secretive Left Bank headquarters that disgruntled Socialist officials call “the forbidden city”. In a book this week, the woman who draws inspiration from Joan of Arc has attempted to scotch rumours that she is no longer together with François Hollande, the party leader and father of her four children.

Campaigning in Orleans, Blois and Tours, Ms Royal seemed almost to have jettisoned the party whose elders have despaired of her erratic campaign. She never used “we”, sticking to the singular “Je and moi” as she sketched her plan for La France Présidente.

Her new slogan means “France in charge” but it also carries the sense of a woman as president, the novelty that Ms Royal anticipates after the May 6 run-off. Unlike many women politicians, Ms Royal has deployed her femininity as a force. She says that she understands real life more then a man and that she is a victim of mysogynist resentment among rivals who are unable to accept the idea of a female leader.

The slogan, which she imposed this week on an unenthusiastic party along with a stark monochrome photograph, conveys the national pride that Ms Royal has seized as a theme.

To the distaste of old leftists, she has given Mr Sarkozy a run for his money by competing with him and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far Right over patriotism. She has even urged every family to display a Tricolor on Bastille day — an idea that prompted Mr Bayrou to ridicule her “American-style flag-waving”.

Chatting after a rally in Blois, Ms Royal said that she would put France back in the driving seat of Europe. La France Présidentewould ensure that the EU protected citizens against capitalist excesses, she said. The so-called “ultra-liberalism” of the Union is identified with Tony Blair, from whom Ms Royal has carefully distanced herself. “It was suggested that I should meet Gordon Brown, but I have been too busy campaigning,” she told The Times.

In Tours, she promised that “France would lead the world with its universal values, as a model for society”. To cheering, she added: “There can be no economic efficiency without social justice.”

First, though, France must sign up to her remedy for the “precariousness, brutality and violence” of a society afflicted with high unemployment and social injustice. Since she has remained vague on figures and policies, this amounts to simple faith in Ms Royal’s ability to foster the new consensus that will bring prosperity and revive the protective welfare state.

Supporters feel a mix of admiration and scepticism. Patrick Bernard, 35, a teacher who has always voted Socialist, said: “She’s great and we really want to believe in her, but there is something a little worrying about her.”

Read Charles Bremner's Paris blog

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