For a man who may in days have lost the gamble of his life, François Bayrou looked remarkably serene as he negotiated the admiring crowds in the rue Faidherbe in the heart of Lille.

Pumping hands and signing autographs like a rock star, the centrist candidate for the French presidency had brought a simple message to the old industrial north and Socialist bastion: “Don’t waste your vote. I am the only one who can beat Sarkozy.”

In the lead-up to Sunday’s first-round vote, Mr Bayrou, 55, has adopted almost mystical language as he fights to convince doubters that he, and not Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, is the only plausible alternative to the conservative favourite for the Elysée Palace. Mr Sarkozy, 52, is certain to stroll through to the May 6 run-off so this week’s race has come down to a “Ségo-Bayrou” duel to the death in which the Socialist has the stronger hand.

Before an overflowing crowd of 5,000 in the Zenith stadium, the farmer-politician from the Pyrenees proclaimed himself the saviour of France. The pollsters were lying, he said.

“I feel a great passion, a desire for a different way,” he told a crowd speckled with the orange colour that he has adopted for his “revolution from the Centre”.

“An immense energy is radiating in waves throughout French society,” Mr Bayrou said. “The French want this frozen political world to move . . . The French people are preparing one of those surprises that they like to spring.”

Ms Royal and Mr Sarkozy dismiss Mr Bayrou’s messianic certainty as the desperation of a loser. The gamble by the veteran centre-right leader to recast himself as a New Age foe of party politics has been exposed as a fraud, they both say.

Mr Bayrou is stuck in third place and the polls show him sinking further behind Ms Royal. The most damaging figure for Mr Bayrou was a poll this week that put Ms Royal level with Mr Sarkozy in a run-off. Until now, surveys showed that Mr Bayrou would easily beat Mr Sarkozy while Ms Royal would fail. Ms Royal’s team remains worried, however, about “the Bayrou effect”.

About a third of voters remain undecided — with the biggest doubters wondering whether to buy Mr Bayrou’s mould-breaking message of “a plague on both their houses”.

“Reasonable people of Left and Right are ready to work together to rescue France from its worst crisis since 1958,” he has said, “and I am the man who will bring the change. Sarkozy fans tension and frighten people while Royal is so erratic that she frightens people.”

While Mr Bayrou’s mission has failed to achieve critical mass, his credibility has been boosted over the past month with support from senior figures in the political and business world. These include Azouz Begag, the outgoing Minister for Equality, and a couple of dozen high civil servants close to the Socialist party.

His biggest coup came this week when three Socialist government veterans — Michel Rocard, the former Prime Minister, Bernard Kouchner, the former Health Minister and Claude Allègre, the former Education Minister — called on Ms Royal to team up with him.

The Royal camp have shrugged off the damage and kept their fire on the centrist, who they say remains close to the Sarkozy camp with which his Union for French Democracy was long allied.

The killer argument for the Royalists and Mr Sarkozy is that Mr Bayrou could never win a parliamentary majority. He has promised to choose a prime minister from the centre-Left and appoint a Cabinet of moderates, while hoping that voters would return a friendly parliament in general elections in June. François Hollande, Ms Royal’s partner, dismissed this as a mirage. “If somehow Bayrou is elected, he will face immediate cohabition with either the Socialist party or [Sarkozy’s] UMP in government. It would be paralysis,” Mr Hollande told The Times.

The Sarkozy camp is already planning revenge. Most of the three dozen MPs of Mr Bayrou’s UDF party, and hundreds of regional officeholders, owe their seats to election pacts with the UMP. The bigger party may well pull the plug on these arrangements if Mr Bayrou goes through to the run-off.

Middle man

— François Bayrou born May 25, 1951, in Bordères, Pyrénées-Atlantiques

— Attended university in Bordeaux

— A critic of the French two-party system, he argues that “the Right-Left divide has lost its lustre”

— He manages family farm and uses a tractor inherited from his father as the emblem of his campaign

— He has promised to be “a people’s President, working for farmers, teachers, nurses, workers and small businesses”

Source: Bayrou.fr; Times archives

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