What a fantastic Florida-like mess in the French Socialist Party. Martine Aubry – Jacques Delors’s daughter – claims to have won the leadership of the party, beating Segolene Royal by 42 votes out of more than 134,000 cast. Royal is demanding a recount and has accused Aubry of issuing an auto-proclamation to claim the leadership – a word redolent of Latin American coups.

Francois Hollande, the party’s outgoing leader, must have rather complicated feelings as he tries to sort all this out – he is, after all, Segolene’s estranged ex-husband. Meanwhile President Sarkozy is gloating openly, announcing grandly that – “Nothing unites the Socialist Party leaders except an astonishingly violent hatred.” It’s a great line. But he has a certain cheek, given that his own erstwhile rival – Dominique de Villepin – is now going to face trial for his alleged role in efforts to blacken Sarko’s name. What is the French for chutzpah?

The wrangles in the Socialist Party promise to be a great spectacle – even if the party’s chances of returning to power anytime soon look pretty slim. It reminds me of that old joke that academic politics is espescially vicious “because the stakes are so low”.

The constitutional reforms pushed through by President Sarkozy yesterday are impressive for two reasons.

First, he got it done.

Second, despite the fact that he is regularly portrayed as a megalomaniac, Sarko is deliberately pushing through reforms that actually weaken the power of the presidency.

Of course, there is some dispute about this. The Socialist deputies highlighted the fact that the president will now be able to address parliament to suggest that some sort of cult of personality is being built up. But I thought this interview in Le Monde with Guy Carcassone, a law professor was pretty convincing. The prof argues that the main effects of the refroms are to strengthen parliament and that this is not “a constitutionalisation of Sarkozyism.” He also highlights another improvement. In future, proposals for new laws will have to be accompanied by an impact assessment.

Tony Blair thinks that the British media are too frenzied and aggressive (see yesterday’s post). But are the French media too passive and respectful of authority?

The question is raised by the current controversy over whether Nicolas Sarkozy was drunk at a press conference at the G8 summit. The suggestion was first made by a Belgian television newscaster and the accompanying video is certainly amusing and suggestive. But no French television station broadcast the footage. And the main French papers also ignored the story, until the Belgian TV newsreader was forced to apologise – a fact which was then dutifully reported in France.

The British love to think of the French as irredeemably corrupt. But take a look at recent corruption scandals in Britain and France, and it is hard to avoid the impression that it is the French who are taking a tougher line on sleaze than the supposedly upright Anglo-Saxons.

Last month, both the British and French prime ministers were interviewed by the police within a week of each other. But the handling of Tony Blair was noticeably softer than the treatment meted out to Dominique de Villepin. Mr Blair had a gentlemanly chat about the “cash-for-honours” scandal – which involves allegations that the Labour Party essentially sold peerages in return for loans to the party. His interview took place in Downing Street in the middle of the day, and took less than two hours. By contrast Mr de Villepin was subjected to a 13-hour interrogation, ending at three in the morning. He was apparently being questioned about suggestions that he may have attempted to smear fellow ministers in the “Clearstream affair”. (Warning to readers: Do not attempt to understand the Clearstream affair, that way madness lies).

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.