NEW light was shed yesterday on the turbulent private life of Nicolas Sarkozy, the star Cabinet Minister and would-be French president, when the media reported that he had replaced his wife, who has just left him, with a well-known journalist.

Word that Anne Fulda, 42, a political correspondent of Le Figaro, had moved in with M Sarkozy, 50, the Interior Minister and leader of President Chirac’s Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), marked a further break with the French tradition of media silence over the romances of politicians.

The couple’s liaison was known to insiders but would previously have been kept from public knowledge. In the past, media complicity has shielded the conquests of politicians, including those of the late President Mitterrand and M Chirac.

M Sarkozy was, in traditional French terms, humiliated this year when the media broke the old taboo and reported that Cécilia, his wife, had left him for Richard Attias, an events organiser. Her flight from the family home, inside the Ministry of the Interior, marked a turning point in M Sarkozy’s political fortunes.

Visibly destabilised by the affair during the summer, he lost the political ascendancy that he had held since 2002. He has lately been overtaken in some popularity polls by his chief rival, Dominique de Villepin, M Chirac’s appointed Prime Minister.

In the French view, a sign of M Sarkozy’s downgrading came in London on Monday when Tony Blair cancelled a planned Downing Street session with him and met him briefly at a hotel instead.

M Sarkozy is depicting himself as the victim of an unprecedented dirty-tricks campaign to sabotage his efforts to succeed M Chirac in April 2007. Privately, he blames M de Villepin’s entourage. The media’s response is that the charismatic reformer set himself up for scrutiny by parading his wife as a political asset. M Sarkozy has opened a legal action against a Swiss newspaper that alleged he had been involved with the wife of a ministerial colleague.

France Soir argued yesterday that the public had a right to know when it named Mme Fulda after other media mentioned her in the past week without identifying her.

“Her presence will modify the image of the Interior Minister and thus have a political impact,” the paper said.

“She will be a media asset who will count heavily in the presidential campaign . . . Tomorrow Anne Fulda will perhaps be the First Lady.”

Other commentators were worrying about the number of politicians teaming up with journalists. These include most recently Jean-Louis Borloo, the Minister for Social Affairs, who married Béatrice Schoenberg, the star news presenter of France 2, a state TV channel.

ROOM TO MANOEUVRE

Tony Blair went to great lengths to avoid offending President Chirac of France when he met M Sarkozy in London on Monday. Mr Blair was keen to befriend the rising star of French politics, but Downing Street was bombarded with demands from the Elysée Palace that M Sarkozy must not be entertained at No 10. The talks were diplomatically moved to a Marriott Hotel.

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