France's students are in revolt. Its urban ghettos are sporadically aflame. Its trades unions are planning national strikes tomorrow. Its discredited 73-year-old president, Jacques Chirac, is serving out his time. An opinion poll, published by Le Figaro newspaper on Saturday, showed that 50 per cent of French people did not have faith in the market economy - compared with 20 per cent in communist China. One of history's eternal questions resounds around Paris once again: can France reform itself without revolution?

On Saturday, in front of his fired-up supporters, Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of the ruling centre-right UMP party, provided his own rhetorical answer to that question. The presidential election of 2007, for which he is a leading contender, would unleash France's creative energies, he said, invoking his latest campaign theme: "Imagine France Afterwards".