THE battle to be the next French President heated up yesterday when Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right favourite, set out his manifesto for a revolution to restore basic values that would win the confidence of a younger generation that distrusts him.

M Sarkozy, 51, the Interior Minister and leader of the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP), President Chirac’s party, blamed the Sixties generation for squandering France’s heritage and creating a sense of entitlement and despair among the young. He would, he promised, create a new, better-educated France of hard workers and entrepreneurs.

M Sarkozy staged what was effectively the launch of his campaign for the elections next April at a weekend conference of young party activists in Marseilles. On Friday Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister and M Sarkozy’s biggest rival, gave his blessing — without enthusiasm — to “cher Nicolas”, whose candidacy for the UMP now appears certain. An Ipsos poll yesterday indicated that 45 per cent of French people want M Sarkozy to stand for the UMP, with only 8 per cent supporting M de Villepin and 3 per cent in favour of M Chirac running for a third term.

Eight months before the two-round election, the multi-candidate race has been turned by opinion polls and the media into a duel between M Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, 52, of the Socialists. Although adored by voters, Mme Royal is being resisted by senior figures in her own party. Both M Sarkozy and Mme Royal are promising to restore values and end the sense of stagnation and malaise that has afflicted France for two decades.

About 7,000 young supporters greeted M Sarkozy like an idol when he made a triumphant entry in Marseilles to an anthem by Johnny Hallyday, the Gallic rocker who has rallied to his cause over the past week. The minister embraced Hallyday, who was in the front row, along with Doc Gyneco, a rap star from the troubled Paris suburbs who has also joined the “Sarko” camp.

M Sarkozy struck a lofty tone, quoting Michelangelo and placing himself in the tradition of great French leaders from Napoleon to Charles de Gaulle. He stood by his pledge to create a clean break with the culture of defeatism and entitlement that he blames for the country’s low morale and relative economic decline.

He devoted much of his speech to an attempt to boost his standing with the young. Polls indicate that M Sarkozy remains unpopular with the under-30s, who dislike his outspoken tactics on immigration and his reaction to violence by immigrant youths on housing estates. Reaching out to the second-generation French of Arab and African origin, he said: “France is your country, it’s your nation. It is your homeland and you have no other, even if your parents or your grandparents came from elsewhere.”

M Sarkozy also set out plans for putting the environment at the heart of government.

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• How to get Madonna’s Thighs