Ségolène Royal, who is now close to becoming France’s first woman president, must spend the next two weeks on a single mission: convincing doubters that she has the stature of a head of state.

Unlike Nicolas Sarkozy, who is admired as an executive but handicapped by a harsh image, Ms Royal, 53, is liked but there are doubts about her ability to lead one of Europe’s biggest and most turbulent nations.

After a spectacular start to her campaign last year, the stylish Socialist disappointed many on the Left and Centre in the final weeks as she struggled to project a clear vision for reforming France. Her loss of credibility opened the way for François Bayrou, a centre-right politician who moved leftwards promising more realism.

Ms Royal, one of an army officer’s family of eight children, benefitted in the end from the loyalty of France’s millions of left-wing voters who feared a repeat of the 2002 elimination of their candidate in the first round.

A mother of four, long-serving MP and a former minister, Ms Royal cast herself as an outsider who would introduce an overtly feminine, maternal, style of leadership in one of Europe’s most male-dominated political worlds.

She appealed to women to vote for her on the grounds of her gender and on Friday she said that it took a woman to understand that “everything is connected”. However, Ms Royal unsettled orthodox left-wing voters with a “postmodern” form of socialism which she sums up with the slogan ordre juste — roughly, a fairer, more disciplined society.

An admirer of Tony Blair, Ms Royal borrowed some of the British Prime Minister’s campaign techniques and policies, notably on education reform and “toughness on crime and the causes of crime”. She wants a greater sense of responsibility and is promising to reconcile traditionally anti-capitalist France with the free market. She has mixed these themes with promises to “punish” excessive profit-making and pledges to shore up France’s old blanket of social protection.

Ms Royal has been handicapped by her failure to explain how her new caring society would function or be financed. She usually says she will follow the example that she has set as president of the western region of Poitou-Charentes, which she has headed since 2004.

The gaffe-prone Ms Royal has also suffered from the failure of former rivals in the party to support her idiosyncratic campaign. François Hollande, her domestic partner of 27 years and leader of the Socialist Party, is convinced that all this will change with Ms Royal’s breakthrough to the run-off. “Everyone will look at her differently,” Mr Hollande told The Times. “She will have survived trial by fire and be seen as a winner for the Left. That is what charisma is about.”

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