Ségolène Royal intensified a desperate final effort yesterday to tar Nicolas Sarkozy, her presidential opponent, as a dangerous tyrant whose election would threaten the peace of France.

Ms Royal, the left-wing candidate who is about four points behind the conservative Mr Sarkozy in polls, denounced her opponent for the “great violence” and “brutality” of a campaign that she maintained was frightening away voters.

She will use a critical television debate with her opponent tomorrow to contrast her “France at peace with itself” with Mr Sarkozy’s “France of the hard Right”.

Ms Royal’s line of attack, five days before the country goes to the polls, was amplified yesterday by aides and supporters. In the latest torrent of anti-Sarko vitriol, 100 stars of the arts and sciences declared that “Sarkozy embodies a hard radicalised Right . . . with all its fears and hates. Entrusting the presidency to a demagogue like this means real danger.”

For the Left, vilifying Mr Sarkozy offers a last hope of breaking his march to the Elysée Palace on Sunday. Ms Royal’s aim is to stir anti-Sarkozy fears among those who voted for the centrist candidate, François Bayrou, who was eliminated with 18 per cent of the vote on April 22.

After attacking Mr Bayrou as a stealth Sarkozyite in the first phase of the campaign, Ms Royal has reversed course over the past week and waged a charm offensive towards him and his voters. In another gesture yesterday, she suggested that, if elected, she would appoint as prime minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist rival who is popular with the pro-Bayrou centre.

Fomenting the TSS factor (Tout sauf Sarkozy — anyone but Sarkozy) became inevitable when he emerged from the first-round vote with much greater credibility than Ms Royal but little popularity.

A CSA poll on Sunday found that 65 per cent of French people think Mr Sarkozy “solid” compared with only 24 per cent for the Socialist. Yet only 29 per cent find him likeable, compared with a 57 per cent rating for Ms Royal.

The Socialists set out to demonise Mr Sarkozy months ago, according to Eric Besson, a senior campaign official who defected after falling out with Ms Royal. “Since we had a weak candidate, it was the best path to take,” he said.

As a tough Interior Minister until last month, the ambitious Mr Sarkozy earned the dislike of many young people — especially those from the immigrant ghettos. His doctrines of radical economic reform and individual responsibility — never before aired by a senior French politician — have been welcomed by many as a revolution, but cast by opponents as divisive, cruel and unFrench.

Mr Sarkozy has offered opponents new ammunition over the past month by breaching politically correct taboos on immigration and national identity and successfully wooing supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right candidate.

With his character increasingly a campaign issue, Mr Sarkozy mused at the weekend over the antipathy that he stirs: “Why so much hate? Maybe it is because I say out loud what everyone thinks to themselves.”

He proceeded to spur fresh fury among the left-wing Establishment by blaming the “generation of 1968” for the moral crisis of France. The Socialist party elders and many top civil servants and academics were students in that year of revolt.

Pro-Royal campaigners have called him a “French Berlusconi”, a new Bonaparte and a “French George W. Bush”.

Marianne, a low-circulation magazine, has sold out 300,000 copies of a cover story on “The True Sarkozy”. This called him insane. “His is the kind of madness that has stoked a fair number of apprentice dictators in the past,” it said.

The 100 artists and intellectuals called for a Royal vote yesterday: “To vote against Nicolas Sarkozy is to avoid the danger of a France at war with itself, in conflict and in crisis, divided and torn apart,” said the group, which included the actress Jeanne Moreau, the film directors François Ozon and Constantin Costa-Gavras and the singer Georges Moustaki.

Many of the signatories are to join Ms Royal, along with pop singers and other celebrities, at a rally tonight at the Charlety Stadium in Paris.

Also on hand will be Lilian Thuram, the Caribbean-born football star and member of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team, who said yesterday: “Mr Sarkozy stirs the latent racism in people.” Thuram, who now plays for Barcelona, has been one of Mr Sarkozy’s most vocal critics.

The demonisation of the favourite is one of the most striking phenomena of the 2007 campaign, academics and historians say. Max Gallo, an historian who served as spokesman for the late President Mitterrand, said: “Putting aside Jean-Marie Le Pen, I cannot think if any other case of a politician being execrated like this since the hatred of opponents of de Gaulle.”

Political mudslinging: the smear campaigns

— Lyndon Johnson nuked Barry Goldwater’s US presidential campaign with adverts implying his election would bring atomic war. A child picking daisies was overshadowed by a mushroom cloud while Johnson intoned “we must either love each other or die”

— The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the Tories’ 1996 “Demon Eyes” depiction of Tony Blair was offensive. It won an award for campaign of the year

— Pauline Hanson of Australia’s far right One Nation party was imprisoned after political opponents helped to fund an electoral fraud case against her. The verdict was later overturned

— Felipe Calderón won the Mexican presidency last year after adverts labelling his opponent “a danger to the country” were banned

Sources: University of Delaware; brandrepublic.com; australianpolitics.com

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