The World

In a recent magazine interview in which she floated the possibility that her husband might run for a third term as French president next year, Bernadette Chirac said enticingly – “Have you seen what good shape he’s in. My husband’s not senile.”

Yet even this modest claim must be thrown into doubt by Mr Chirac’s efforts to celebrate his 74th birthday, by holding an intimate dinner with Vladimir Putin on the margins of a Nato summit in Latvia.

Where does one start? To invite any Russian president to dinner in one of the Baltic states is tactless. To invite this particular president at this particular moment is crass. To do so at a Nato summit, while pointedly not inviting the American president and the British prime minister, is extraordinary.

While the Americans and the British are clearly increasingly concerned about the direction of Putin’s Russia, Mr Chirac’s admiration for the Russian president only seems to grow. In September he awarded Mr Putin the Grand Cross of the Legion d’Honneur, the highest honour that France can bestow on a foreigner. Previous recipients have included Churchill and Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr Chirac’s latest gaffe confirms his reputation as a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at France’s international reputation. During the run-up to the Iraq war, he adopted a position that was, in retrospect, prescient. But he did so in a way that managed to alienate much of Central Europe, just as eight Central European countries were entering the EU. By advising these countries to “shut up”, Mr Chirac managed to give grave offence, while confirming a reputation for French arrogance. And then by holding joint anti-war summits with Gerhard Schroder and Mr Putin, he stoked fears that the views and interests of the smaller European countries might once again be brushed aside by their bigger neighbours.

All of these bad memories were beginning to recede. But, at a stroke, Mr Chirac has revived them. Even Le Figaro, which is generally supportive of the president, seems fairly aghast this morning. So what can President Chirac have been thinking of? He is fond of insisting that – “Russia must not be humiliated” and his spokesman noted stiffly that “As far as I know, Russia is a friendly country.” Maybe all of this is linked to Mr Chirac’s ambitions for yet another term in office. The only even faintly plausible scenario for another Chirac candidacy would be some sort of international crisis, which would allow him to assert his credentials as an elder statesman and a world leader. Perhaps Mr Chirac is trying to hurry along the crisis?

His 74th birthday celebrations are, of course, an uncomfortable reminder of his advancing years. But then again, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the French far right, is clearly going to make another bid for the presidency and he is 78 – and running strongly in the polls.

The French “political class” still shudder at the memory of Le Pen getting through to the second round of the presidential election in 2002. So it is not good news that he is currently at 17 per cent in the polls – at a comparable stage in the electoral cycle last time, Le Pen was at 9 per cent. Most French commentators still assume that the presidential election will ultimately come down to a straight fight between Nicolas Sarkozy for the right and Segolene Royal for the Socialists. But Le Pen could still crash the party.

Finally, I don’t want to give the impression that France’s chattering classes are preoccupied only by the presidential election and the doings of President Chirac. I am in Paris at the moment, where the big story of the past couple of days has been football hooliganism. A member of the “Boulogne Boys”, a gang of hooligans who support Paris St.Germain, was shot dead by a policeman last week – after allegedly being part of a gang that attacked Jewish football supporters. The papers here are full of long and detailed accounts of the doings of the Boulogne boys. Last night I had dinner with the news editor of a big French paper, who kept distractedly checking his text messages – and then sighing. Eventually I asked him what the problem was, and he said that one of his reporters was now receiving death threats from the Boulogne Boys. It is all rather closer to home than an abandoned dinner party in Riga.