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Like father, like son? French right seeks saviour in Louis Sarkozy

The former president’s son, a Trump-loving writer raised in the US, is being hailed as the future of the crisis hit Republicans
Louis Sarkozy sitting in a chair.
Louis Sarkozy, who went to a military academy in the US, is hoping to enter French politics
KATIE WILSON FOR THE TIMES

After years in the wilderness, the French centre-right believes it may have found a saviour in the form of a young anglophone liberal with intellectual aspirations and a high-powered wife.

He also happens to have a familiar name. Louis Sarkozy is the son of Nicolas, France’s strongman president between 2007 and 2012, whose shadow still hangs over the country’s political class despite being convicted of corruption in two separate cases.

Louis Sarkozy was mostly brought up in the US after Cécilia Attias, his mother, walked out of the Élysée Palace in 2007 and left the then head of state for a Franco-Moroccan PR specialist based in New York.

He has returned to France with an ill-disguised ambition to play a prominent public role.

Nicolas Sarkozy with his son on his shoulders at the beach.
Nicolas Sarkozy with his son in the early 2000s

Amid a whirl of excitement in the country’s media, and a string of interviews on television and radio, Sarkozy, 28, has hinted that he wants to run in next year’s mayoral elections. One option would be in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the affluent Parisian suburb where his father first rose to prominence as mayor between 1983 and 2002. Another is in Menton on the French Riviera, where the centre-right is in turmoil.

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Questioned by Europe 1 radio, he said he “would be lying if I said I did not think about this and that there had not been conversations about this”, but refused to divulge any further details.

He had been invited by the station to discuss his latest book, Napoleon’s Library: The Emperor, His Books and Their Influence on the Napoleonic Era, which he brought out in English last year and in French this week.

The work, which has won measured praise from historians, is a study of Napoleon’s love of literature and his understanding of its importance as an instrument of power.

Commentators were quick to suggest that the lessons to be drawn from the 224-page book may also apply to its author, who is thought to see the 2026 council elections as a stepping stone towards greater things.

Cecilia Sarkozy and her son Louis at the presidential inauguration.
Louis with his mother, Cécilia, at his father’s presidential inauguration in 2007. By the end of the year, his parents were divorced

For one thing, the work enabled Louis Sarkozy to profess his admiration for Napoleon, which always goes down well on a French right that continues to revere the emperor. “Napoleon Bonaparte is not a political actor in our French history,” Louis Sarkozy said. “He is its creator. Our political scaffolding today is based on him.”

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For another, the book was interpreted as the mark of his intellectual inclinations, which are also considered an asset in a country that likes to see itself as the fount of modern political thought.

“I want to show that I have produced something relatively serious,” he said.

Christian Le Bart, professor of political science at Sciences Po Rennes, told the 20 Minutes newspaper that Louis Sarkozy was seeking to prove his “intellectual credibility” while distinguishing himself from his father, who suffered from a “weak cultural legitimacy”. Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, has long been mocked for his penchant for pop music and alleged lack of literary depth.

The son is different to the father in other ways too. He is reported to measure 6ft 3in, for instance, unlike his 5ft 6in father, who had a propensity to raise his stature by wearing heeled shoes at meetings with lofty figures such as Barack Obama.

The bearded Louis, having trained at Valley Forge military academy in Pennsylvania, cuts a broad-shouldered and imposing figure. He seems more measured than his excitable father too, remaining phlegmatic during a television appearance last weekend when a comic made a string of jokes about Nicolas Sarkozy’s criminal record — the former president having been forced to wear an ankle tag after being convicted of trying to bribe a judge.

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Louis’s fluency in English also marks him apart from his father, whose limited grasp of the language left Hillary Clinton bewildered when she visited Paris in 2010. “I’m sorry for the time,” said Nicolas Sarkozy, pointing at the rainy sky and failing to remember that “time” and “weather” are different words in English.

The two do have things in common, however. Like his father, who wed Carla Bruni-Sarkozy after he and Cécilia divorced, Louis Sarkozy is married to a former model — in his case, Natali Husic, 33, who was born in the former Yugoslavia and who is described by her husband as formidably intelligent and by other observers as high-powered and fiercely ambitious.

Couple embracing on a balcony overlooking a scenic landscape.
Sarkozy’s wife, Natali Husic, a former model, is said to be very ambitious

The Republicans, who have been out of office since Sarkozy lost the presidency and are in the midst of a divisive battle to choose a new leader, have welcomed Louis Sarkozy with open arms. “He’s our heart-throb at the moment,” an unnamed Republicans MP told BFM, the rolling news channel.

However, his years in the US have left him with political opinions that do not always go down well with France’s conservatives. He has come out in favour of the legalisation of cannabis, for instance, and surrogate motherhood, both of which are rejected by Republicans.

Louis Sarkozy supports gun ownership and President Trump. He says France needs “four or five Elon Musks” to slim its bloated state, and a Javier Milei “to the power of 1,000”, a reference to Argentina’s right-wing president.

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His hope, he says, is to bring reformist liberalism to a country that has always believed in a strong state. Others have tried to do so before him, including some of his father’s former cabinet colleagues. None succeeded.

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