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Ségolène Royal, the rising star of the French Socialist party, is a keen admirer of Tony Blair and could draw on some of the UK prime minister's policies if elected France's first woman president in next year's elections.

Her comments may surprise some people. While Mr Blair is widely admired by Europe's social democrats for reinvigorating the Labour party, that view is not widely held in France where many socialists who would otherwise be aligned with the Blair project see him as a crypto-Thatcherite.

"I think Tony Blair has been caricatured in France. It does not bother me to claim adherence to some of his ideas," Ms Royal told the FT. "He has reinvested in public services. On youth unemployment, he has had real success by using more flexibility but also more security."

"Young graduates are better treated in the UK than in France, so it is not just for tax reasons that so many of our young are leaving France to go and work in the City of London," said Ms Royal, distancing herself from her party's deeply ingrained suspicion of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and Blairism. "We must not be blocked on any issues - like the 35-hour week, for instance," she said.

However, Ms Royal may disappoint any overseas investors hoping she could become the acceptable face of French socialism, as her ideas seem to be equally inspired by late president François Mitterrand, her former political master.

"How can the government cut public sector recruitment while the interior minister is calling for more police in schools, on trains and in the suburbs?"

She is also a critic of the government's labour market reforms, giving small businesses and employers of young people more flexibility by allowing them to fire staff easily in the first two years of a contract. "It is bad. It hits youth and gives them the wrong message by devaluing work," she said.

Although much of her economic and foreign policy ideas are shrouded in mystery, work under way in a small factory in Paris's sleepy 11th arrondissement confirms her celebrity status on the French left.

The creation of a puppet modelled on Ms Royal for the satirical television show Les Guignols (the French equivalent of the UK's Spitting Image) is the latest sign that she has hit the political big time.

Ms Royal is the opinion polls' favourite to be the Socialist party candidate in next year's presidential elections.

Barely a day goes by in France without a debate on television or in the press about whether she is the left's best chance of beating Nicolas Sarkozy, the early presidential favourite on the right, or just a fad who will vanish as quickly as she arrived.



Royal the favourite to reign over left in French politics