Woman leads the Right way to French revolution

PARIS: An ambitious young Frenchwoman whose fight against trade unions has earned her the nickname Mademoiselle Thatcher is to stand for parliament at the start of a political career she hopes will revolutionise France.

If elected next year, Sabine Hérold , the darling of the French Right, will become the country's youngest MP at the age of 25.

In March, Herold helped to launch Liberal Alternative, a political party that already has representatives in 150 French towns and cities. She hopes it will soon have several MPs.

"People are hungry for change," she said.

"But none of the traditional parties on the Left or the Right offers any prospect for a break with the past. We want to create a new generation of politicians to be able to change France."

She certainly does not lack confidence. As a 21-year-old student, Herold grabbed the limelight after leading a rally against the unions.

"I like what Margaret Thatcher did in Britain," she said. "The unions in this country should be more accountable. They're not even obliged to reveal the source of their funds."

In her view, neither of the main candidates in next year's presidential election will change France's outmoded economy.

No matter how much Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative interior minister and most likely candidate for the Centre-Right, promises a "rupture" with the past, Herold complained he has a strong dirigiste streak, referring to the French tradition of big intrusive government.

And on the Left, Segolene Royal, star of the opinion polls, might find it hard to impose some of her policies without alienating her Socialist Party.

Herold, the daughter of schoolteachers from Lille, predicts her free-market party will dominate French politics.

"In France, 30 is the average number of years most of the politicians have been on the scene," she said. "In our party, it is the average age of the leaders."

With her good looks and quick wit, she will challenge Francoise de Panafieu, the conservative MP Herold wants to evict from her seat in the 17th arrondissement of Paris in the legislative elections next June.

Herold says her party will nominate a candidate for the presidential ballot next May, but it will not be her. "I am still a bit young for that," she said.

She is about to start a job in a small venture-capital firm after graduating from a Paris business school last week. "Some of our politicians have never really done anything in the real world. I want to know what business is."

She already has more experience of the outside world than many politicians. Her studies involved a year of theology at Birmingham University in England. At the Sciences Po, the familiar name for the political sciences school in Paris, she met Edouard Fillias. When he set up Liberal Alternative, she became spokeswoman. The party is quickly gathering supporters and has set up fundraising committees from London to New York.

French people who have lived abroad are considered to be fertile for recruitment. Having experienced life in "the Anglo-Saxon world", they are more likely to sympathise with economic liberalism.

Liberal Alternative wants a lot more than free markets, says Herold. "What we have in this country is a nanny state which tells us how to eat, how to drink, how to live and how to do everything. We want to give power back to the people."

with The Sunday Times