The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as the next president of France was greeted with a light smattering of riots across the country. Mr Sarkozy knows that could be just the aperitif. There is a real risk of social unrest, as France’s new president tries to deliver on his promise of “rupture” with the past.

Mr Sarkozy knows that three prime ministers of the Chirac era – Alain Juppé, Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Dominique de Villepin – were forced to abandon economic reforms in the face of popular demonstrations. But he is determined that things will be different this time. One member of the Sarkozy inner circle argues that previous rounds of reform failed because President Jacques Chirac lost his nerve. With “Nicolas” in the Élysée palace, things will be different.

The new president will certainly need nerves of steel because the reforms he hopes to push through in his first 100 days in office could almost be designed to antagonise every strike-happy interest group in the country.

The rest of Gideon’s weekly FT column is here (FT.com subscription required). You can comment below.

It’s past midnight in Paris and I’ve just finished watching the great debate - the long-awaited face-off between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal.

My verdict? Bizarrely boring; bizarrely parochial - and probably a narrow victory for Sarkozy.

I know France is a serious country - but letting the debate run for two and a half hours seemed to be a bit of a punishment for even the most serious-minded of citizens. Worse, despite the acres of time available to them, they barely discussed some of the most serious issues facing France. There was no discussion  - and I mean none - of the fact that in 2005 France faced over three weeks of nightly riots. You might have thought that rated a mention. And in 150 minutes of debate, they spent barely 15 minutes discussing the outside world.

Instead, the two candidates got lost in the finer details of social and economic policy. I know that France faces serious economic problems. And they had a good and fairly clear discussion of the economics of the 35-hour-week. (I thought Sarkozy scored heavily there - but then I agree with him that it’s a mad law) But was it really necessary to spend quite so much time on issues like civil-service reform, nuclear power and the school curriculum - while barely discussing the social problems of France’s  suburbs, or the collapse of France’s European policy?

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Yesterday evening I went to see Ségolène Royal give a speech in Paris. It was a hot May Day afernoon – the perfect moment to see the Socialist Party candidate start her final assault on the presidency.

I saw Nicolas Sarkozy - Ségolène’s rival – speak a couple of weeks ago. But that was before a small audience in a five-star hotel in a smart part of Paris. Ségolène’s event was very different – a huge rally and pop concert in a stadium in the 13th arrondissement (not very smart). I took a taxi to the stadium with John Thornhill, the FT’s Europe editor. The roads were closed off and we had to walk the last few blocks. John remarked - slightly  nervously I thought – "I don’t really know this part of Paris."

When we arrived at the stadium, the concert was still going on, the gates were barred and there were huge crowds milling around outside. Eventually I elbowed my way up to a gate with a big sign on it saying "Press". Normally in France, brandishing a press card has a magical – almost embarrassing – effect. (It’s particularly effective for queue-jumping at museums.) But not this time. The mixture of riot police and Socialist Party organisers were unimpressed. Ségolène wasn’t due on stage for 45 minutes. But they weren’t letting anyone else in.

Annoyed by this, I decided to walk around the stadium and look for a gap in the security. About 100 yards further on, I came across some people – mainly young blacks and Arabs – who had found a way into the stadium. They had turned a crash barrier on its side and were using it as a makeshift ladder, allowing them to clamber up to the top of the metal fence surrounding the stadium– and then leap down onto the other side. I climbed up myself and took a look.

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Five years ago, just before the final round of the 2002 French presidential election, I went to see Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front candidate, address an election rally in front of the Paris Opera House. I was not the only curious foreigner in the crowd. Le Pen had also drawn in far-right zealots from all over Europe – I spotted people carrying Flemish, Spanish and Italian flags. And these guys were the real deal – genuine fascists. When I asked the Italian standing next to me whether he was a supporter of the Alleanza Nazionale – the party once regarded as the heirs to Mussolini – he reacted indignantly, and made it clear that he regarded the AN as sell-outs. No, he proudly informed, he was a supporter of Forza Nuova – a much harder-line far-right outfit.

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Some politicians have got it, and some don’t. On Friday I watched Nicolas Sarkozy give a speech at a hotel in Paris – and he definitely has it. Sarko – who is leading in the polls for the French presidential election (the final round is on May 6th) – was masterful. By turns he was funny, rousing, aggressive and engaging.

Of course the audience - a group of young French entrepreneurs – was tailor-made for Sarkozy. This above all is the group that is crying out for change and reform, and that is totally receptive to Sarko’s famous call for a “rupture” with the old way of doing things. But one of the impressive aspects of Sarkozy’s performance was the way in which he didn’t totally truckle to his audience. At one point he attacked the use of “golden parachutes” (he used the English term) for chief executives leaving companies. His audience was initially fairly guarded in its response. But Sarko spotted one man in the audience who was applauding - singled him out - and said that this man had understood that the argument for capitalism could not be won, unless the French people knew that the system was just. Cue thunderous applause.

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We should know by late on Thursday night whether Ségolène Royal has got the Socialist nomination for the French presidency. Party members are voting all day Thursday and the polls close at 22.00.

A few months ago Ségolène (everyone seems to call her by her first name now, like Oprah) was thought to have it in the bag. But she had a tough time in the candidates’ debates with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Laurent Fabius, and the last time I checked with the FT’s Paris office, they were refusing to predict whether Ségolène would get the 50 per cent of votes she needs to clinch the nomination. If she falls short of the 50 per cent threshold, it goes to a run-off on November 23. And that would give the “anyone but Ségolène” camp a chance to rally against her – as well as puncturing her aura of invincibility.

It still seems hard to believe that the French Socialists would do something as stupid as rejecting the one candidate they have who seems to have a genuine chance of winning. Dominique Strauss-Kahn would be a particularly odd choice. Not that I have anything against him, I’ve met him a couple of times and I thought he was charming and clever. But he is also a Euro-fanatic – which would make him an odd choice given that France voted down the EU constitution only last year.

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