Dubai: In the run-up to the 2007 French election, the BBC ran a profile on Nicolas Sarkozy quoting his former campaign manager, Frank Tapiro. "[He] is a bit like the advertising campaign for Marmite, you either love it or hate it."
The protests that took place in the French capital following Sarkozy's election to the presidency in May 2007 certainly showed the latter camp, but the smoky French bar in which I watched the results come in that night was a long way from Paris.
As we waited for our steak and chips in Granville, in the heart of rural Normandy, locals sat glued to the TV as the results came in on a tiny monitor sandwiched in a corner of the room.
It was the old French cliché; checked tablecloths and grey-haired men in berets with cigarettes gripped tightly between yellowed fingers. There were cheers from a group of young men and satisfied nods from the older clientele as the TV announced Sarkozy's victory over socialist rival Segolene Royal.
I did not speak French well enough to translate the new president's victory speech (in which he promised to restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect), but it was well received by those gathered in the dingy bar. France, Sarkozy announced, has chosen to break with the ideas of the past.
Austerity bites
Fast forward five years and it is incredible how much has changed. Even if Sarkozy does win the first leg of the poll that could see him restored to the Elysee, his popularity is a fraction of what it was. The fact that Francois Hollande, a man that has never held a cabinet post, was backed by Sarkozy mentor and 2007 backer Jacques Chirac, and stands a chance of upsetting the incumbent president, speaks volumes.
But there has been a change in focus in Europe since those post-financial crisis days, and one wonders whether those people in the bar in Granville that night still care about immigration — the key election issue in 2007, particularly in rural France — and are not now more worried about their businesses as austerity bites.
Tourism, the industry that had brought me to Normandy all those years ago, has suffered as Europe's economy wanes, and rural towns like Granville will have borne the brunt of it.
As a visiting journalist, the bubbly, engaging mayor of the city once showed me around a new tourism centre before taking me for a seafood lunch — I wonder whether she would be so upbeat today.
Politics is a fickle business, and if the great and good of Normandy are less optimistic about France's prospects today, it is obvious who they are likely to blame.
