They Must be Desperate

If your Referendum Campaign is in need of a boost, who you gonna call?

Jacques Chirac, French president, will on Thursday night publicly throw his weight behind the campaign to secure a Yes vote on the European Union constitution.

As far as I understand, he is the main reason people are going to vote against it. He makes a very strange saviour.

Mr Chirac will seek to turn the tide in France's increasingly acrimonious debate over the constitution when he meets 80 young voters in a televised encounter.

80 hand picked party members no doubt. Why doesn’t he just get people to wave adoringly in the streets, and have Tank parades, like they do in North Korea. In fact his bravery in facing a toothless audience of inexperienced amateurs looks like it may backfire.

Questions have been raised about the selection of the participants in the Elysée broadcast, and about the role of the president's daughter, Claude, who leads his communications team, in its planning. Opponents have seized on the absence of any champion of the No cause.

Me thinks Kickback Jacques is in for a rough 6 weeks.