Ségo and Dave: are they related?

The resemblance first struck me when, spotting Cameron’s waxy forehead on the front page of a newspaper recently, I unfolded the paper to find that the forehead belonged to French Socialist party candidate Ségolène Royal. It got me wondering whether similarities between the two extended beyond their oddly embalmed complexions.

Politically, of course, they should be opposites, yet Royal has edged so far to the Right (to howls of protest from old French socialists) and Cameron so far to the Left (to equally noisy protests from Thatcherite Tories) that they seem destined to meet somewhere in the middle. Old socialists are appalled by 53-year-old ‘Ségo’ for adopting conservative policies to woo voters tired of unworkable statist solutions; and, like Cameron, she has been busy stealing oppositionist clothes, by suggesting that parents should be allowed to shop around for good schools.

Crucially, neither is an ideologue. What they appear to want most is stardom. Cameron’s political hunger, fuelled by youth and untainted by experience, breeds excitement in those surrounding him. Royal’s appetite for power — equally attractive to voters — has been growing for 20 years. That’s how long this mother of four has waited to get where she is. And like any French politician worth their salt, she has always had a ‘destiny’. As early as 1988, in Orléans, she began her remarkable media-political ascent by making a speech celebrating Joan of Arc.

‘In a world which had been confiscated by men, Joan of Arc committed a triple sacrilege: being a woman of strategy, a female warrior, and a woman of God. The worst offence being that she came from nothing. Very soon, Joans around the world will make themselves known.’

The self-regarding ring of this statement gave a foretaste of Royal’s primary piece of weaponry: her sex. Four years later, when made minister for the environment by Lionel Jospin, she forgot to mention to the Socialist prime minister that she was four months pregnant. ‘If I had, he wouldn’t have chosen me,’ she later explained. In a politically misogynist country like France, the ‘female’ card may have seemed an odd one to play, but Royal was savvy enough to know that what goes against the grain can often be turned on its head and used to advantage. ‘One does not govern with one’s uterus,’ Royal’s special adviser Sophie Bouchet-Petersen admonishes those who oppose her on grounds of her gender. Precisely.

The parallel with Cameron holds to the extent that the Tory leader has done with class what Royal does with sex. Being the Eton-educated son of a stockbroker, and living in Notting Hill, appeared to alienate too many people for him even to be considered as the possible future leader of the Tory party. But his class — as we know from the countless ‘gravel drive’ box-office hits in Britain — has paradoxically helped to make him a figure of interest. If Royal’s ‘bon chic, bon genre’ credentials (her father was a general, she lives in a £630,000 flat on the outskirts of Paris and has a second residence with swimming pool on the Côte d’Azur) can also endear her to the French voting public, it is because the French are not chippy about class and — unlike us — can rejoice in elitism. Here Cameron and Royal adopt different approaches. Dave tries to appeal by condescension: hugging hoodies, launching a Tory advertising campaign featuring the word ‘tosser’. You won’t catch Royal hinting at a colourful past, which may (or may not) include dabbling in drugs. Nor are you likely to see her riding a bicycle to work.

Which brings us to the paramount matter of style. Cameron and Royal are clearly reading from the same media rulebook on how to ingratiate themselves with the public. In August paparazzi pictures of a bikini-clad Miss Royal appeared in French gossip magazines. Nobody quite bought Royal’s subsequent squealings about privacy (just how offended could a woman be who had posed for Paris Match alongside her newborn baby?). The consensus among her sex was that if you looked like that at 53, you would leak photographs of yourself to the nation’s major news outlets too.

Soon after, the first pictures of Cameron in Vilbrequin swimming trunks hit our news-stands. Rather than politicians, murmured voices of dissent, these were two celebrities in the making. When Cameron posed for GQ earlier this year dressed in Timothy Everest, he outclassed Tony Blair in his Paul Smith suits.

Royal’s style too is faultless. Her glossy mane, neither too long nor too short, frames an astonishingly youthful face, prompting a whole ‘Botox or no Botox’ circus among the style-conscious classes. She dresses in (soberly) hip French designer Paule Ka clothes, and in Zara (if only to be able to say ‘like my daughter’). The result is a Jackie Kennedy freshness, with a whiff of Audrey Hepburn. Not a bad look for a futuristic Presidentess of France.

Then there is the subsidiary question of the Cameron/Royal policies. Ask someone in Britain what Cameron stands for and the chances are that they’ll pause for reflection, then, with a certain relief, blurt out, ‘I know. The environment and ...the family.’ Ask any French person about Royal and you’ll get a similar response, though when it comes to public speeches, Ségo undoubtedly has it better, if only because high-toned waffle sounds far better in French than in English.

Royal also has the edge on education and practical knowledge: going to the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, as she did, is two up on Cameron’s Oxford, since it is an even more select establishment and a postgraduate qualification. Also, of course, she has been a minister. And while it’s true that Royal has no foreign policy experience, Cameron has no experience at all. Nevertheless, I am in no doubt that if, as I suspect they will, the two of them finally succeed and meet in office, apart from a bit of friction over Europe, it’ll be a match made in heaven — they could even do an interview for Hello! magazine together.

Celia Walden edits the Daily Telegraph’s Spy column.