The career of Jean Sarkozy, the 21-year-old son of the French president, took a leap yesterday when he was made chief of his father’s centre-right party in Neuilly-sur-Seine, their home town and one of France’s richest boroughs.

The promotion of “Sarko Junior”, a second-year law student and new county councillor, was a move by the President to regain control of the western suburb of Paris he ruled as Mayor for nearly two decades.

Jean Sarkozy’s elevation came as his father cracked the whip in his Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) amid feuding among the rival barons whom he appointed to run the ruling party in his absence as President.

The UMP had a fiasco in Neuilly after David Martinon, the presidential spokesman, bungled a Sarkozy-backed campaign for the job of Mayor. Mr Martinon, a protégé of Cécilia Ciganer, the President’s last wife, was dropped as candidate and has lost his job at the Elysée Palace. To save face the party, which the President has run since 2004 and which has controlled Neuilly for decades, endorsed a dissident conservative in the last month’s council election.

Jean Sarkozy — also known as Scooter Sarko after some well publicised misadventures with his personal transport — was elected to a safe, £24,000-a-year seat on the surrounding, UMP-run council of the Hauts de Seine département, the wealthiest county in France. Sarko Junior — second son from the President’s first marriage — showed some of his father’s campaigning flair in the local elections. He aims to qualify as a lawyer, like his father, and pursue a political career.

As boss of one of the UMP’s biggest local organisations, Jean has been told to mend fences and reassert authority in his father’s old fiefdom.

“My mission is to restore calm and serenity. It’s a difficult job because it is no secret to say that the municipal campaign left wounds,” Sarko Junior said yesterday.

Trouble has been simmering at the UMP since Mr Sarkozy wrested control from the lieutenants of President Chirac in 2004 and reshaped it as his battlewagon for his presidential campaign. MPs are disgruntled over Mr Sarkozy’s sharp drop in popularity and his failure to involve Parliament in the management of the country. On Sunday, Christian Estrosi, a former Sarkozy minister who is now Mayor of Nice, called the UMP a “rabble without a general”.

Mr Sarkozy is now reshuffling the leadership to slow the rise of François Fillon, his Prime Minister, who is turning into a rival.

There are increasing signs that the Sarkozy family is beginning to work as a political machine. Carla Bruni, the President’s new wife, has just been credited with persuading him to drop the controversial appointment of an adviser to a plum state post in Rome.

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