Hollande's kids revolt against 'La Rottweiler'

Paris As a dedicated father, he shopped for clothes with the girls, played football with the boys and never forgot to buy everyone’s favourite breakfast cereal. As the president of France, though, Francois Hollande is finding out how hard it is to please everyone, including his four children.

Confronted by economic woes, he is struggling not to alienate his Socialist power base. The challenge is just as great with his nearest and dearest after his children’s revolt against his girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiler, the first lady.

Led by 27-year-old Thomas, a lawyer, the children are reported to have refused to have any further dealings with Trierweiler, a journalist, because of her public hostility towards Segolene Royal, their mother.

The family ructions could not have come at a worse time for the newly elected president, whose honeymoon with the electorate has ended abruptly: it emerged last week that he must find savings of 40billion euros by the end of next year to keep France from the fiscal abyss.

Experts say it will be impossible unless he rows back on some of his spending promises. But this could bring the people who voted him into office out onto the streets.

He will ponder this puzzle onMonday at a “social conference” where union leaders may threaten to withdraw their support if he puts jobs and social services at risk.

Just as urgent is his struggle to restore peace in the family. He has tried to convince his children to forgive “the first girlfriend” for a tweet against Royal last month that unleashed a political storm and turned the president into a figure of fun.

The children are more inclined to side with their mother, a former presidential candidate with whom Hollande lived for three decades until taking up with Trierweiler in 2006. Flora, the youngest, a 20- year-old psychology student, was said to have been in tears over Trierweiler’s public support for her mother’s rival in a recent parliamentary election.

Clemence, 26, a medical student, and Julien, 24, a film maker, were just as upset: because their mother lost the election she was unable to present herself as a candidate for president of the National Assembly, the job she had always wanted.

“Like all children from broken families they are torn, but they have always been close to their mother and are supporting her 100 per cent,” said a friend of Royal.

The attack on Royal provoked complaints about the “first girlfriend” meddling in politics and Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, ordered Trierweiler to back off: French first ladies, he reminded her, should “know their place”.

Trierweiler, who has said she wants to be more than a “figurehead”, has shown no sign of repentance. She has stopped tweeting. But she has carried on working for Paris Match, the news magazine where Denis Trierweiler, her former husband, works as an editor. Debate has raged over whether journalism is compatible with her role as first lady.

She has been moved from politics, her speciality, to culture and last week she wrote a book review about Rosalind Franklin, the British biophysicist who helped to discover the structure of DNA. The headline was “A disturbing woman”. It could apply equally, le tout Paris agreed, to the journalist.

A source at the magazine described an unpleasant atmosphere, with some reporters up in arms about “la Rottweiler” having an office that she never uses. Unopened mail has piled up on the desk. She writes her articles at home.

“The editor should have dealt with her once Hollande was elected and said, ‘Look, we’ll carry on paying you to keep your ears and eyes open, but you can’t write for us until he’s left office’,” said the source.

Trierweiler has also faced the indignity of being criticised by her predecessors. “I, at least, never intervened when I didn’t like an article,” Carla Bruni, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, was quoted as saying in reference to Trierweiler’s habit of calling up editors to complain about coverage. She is said to have a staff of six in the Elysee Palace. Bruni had only two.

Hollande never married Royal and speculation that he might tie the knot with Trierweiler has, for the time being, ceased: he was reported to have been “furious” with her, not so much on account of her attacks on Royal as for upsetting his children.

Thomas, the eldest, has sometimes seemed torn between his parents. He worked on both his mother’s and his father’s campaign teams and in March was quoted as saying Royal’s had aroused more fervour. The Hollande camp was fuming with him, all the more so when Royal chipped in: “Why are they all reproaching him? He’s right.”

Thomas has only praise for Hollande’s parenting skills, however. “When we siblings quarrelled, he taught us how to put things into perspective,” he told Paris Match.

Hollande’s skills as a conciliator will be useful as he addresses the fiscal dilemma in days to come and even more so, perhaps, in his own household.