Sarko Says...
I have translated Nicolas Sarkozy's reflections on his dealings with three world leaders: Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and David Cameron
Nicolas Sarkozy served as President of France from 2007 to 2012, coming from the conservative Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a Popular Movement) (UMP), now Les Républicains (LR). Notably, he became the first French President not to serve a second term since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing over thirty years earlier, in 1981. In 2023, Sarkozy published a new volume of memoirs, Le Temps des Combats (The Time of Battles), telling the story of his presidency in the years 2009-11. Here, I present English translations I have made of his accounts of his dealings with three world leaders: Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and David Cameron. I do not present Sarkozy’s views here as endorsements, rather as insights into the working relationships between some of the most important world leaders of the time and the issues they faced.
Gordon Brown (British Prime Minister, 2007-10)
Sarkozy appears to have enjoyed a positive relationship with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. Sarkozy professes himself to be a great believer in the “Franco-British partnership”. The two men had briefly served as their countries’ finance ministers together: Sarkozy was France’s Minister of Finance from March to November 2004, whilst Brown served as Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sarkozy recalls how he found Brown a particularly important ally on international economic issues as PM:
In the [G20 meeting of the] Europeans, I naturally counted on the United Kingdom and its Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He was also important as he allowed me to put pressure on the United States in particular and the Anglophone world in general. My attribute of “Frenchman” made me suspect with this world where whether you are left or right changes nothing about the fact that you have to first and foremost be a [free-market economic] liberal. Thus, Gordon Brown was a Labour leader who found himself quite regularly to my right as far as the economy, industry or trade was concerned. Although a member of the Socialist International, he had strictly nothing to do with our French Socialists who viewed the working of the global economy with convictions from the Palaeolithic era!
A large part of Sarkozy’s belief in the “Franco-British partnership” stemmed from what he believed France could learn from Britain’s globalised, free-market economic model, which he saw as much more dynamic with France’s greater dirigisme. That also lay at the heart of his case for Britain’s place in the European Union: “I will plead until my last breath that we need the English in Europe, that your place is with us, that your openness to the world is vital to us.”
Sarkozy recalls his dealings with Brown largely with affection, whilst describing the latter’s idiosyncrasies:
The man was passionate and often fascinating: in love with anything that, directly or indirectly, touches theory, high principles or intellectual matters; keen on the most complex questions; avid for all learned material on the history of the global economy. He was a steadfast and effective ally, in any case at least as long as I managed to fully grasp his reasoning, which sometimes surpassed my comprehension skills! All delivered at an awe-inspiring speed – I had never imagined it was possible to speak so quickly and in such a staccato way. And in a thick Scottish accent [un accent scottish à couper au couteau]. It would be an understatement to say that I concentrated when I talked to him. And we exchanged views very often.
Barack Obama (US President, 2009-17)
Judging by both men’s post-presidential memoirs, Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy had a somewhat tempestuous relationship during their three years together on the world stage. There was perhaps a clash of manner, style and temperament. Sarkozy prided himself on being a man of action with strong convictions who had a vision and saw it through. Obama, by contrast, perhaps had a more reserved leadership style, preferring to take his time to weigh arguments and evidence before taking a decision. Sarkozy, as a very polarising political figure, may have also felt a certain frustration regarding a political leader whom he felt was not judged by the same rules as typical politicians. He writes that, during Obama’s first presidential visit to France, in 2011, “the US President was adulated by the French press, they showered him with praise and they credited him with all qualities.”
In Le Temps des Combats, Sarkozy portrays Obama as totally obsessed with preserving his public image. “Nothing,” Sarkozy asserts, “could be allowed to dent it, not even his loyalties or friendships.” Sarkozy claims that the private man stands in contrast to the public one:
In fact, he is of quite a cold, introverted temperament and expresses only quite a moderate interest in all those around him. His wife is more authentic, stronger, more sincere in the expression of her convictions … Her husband, conversely, hated anything that could put him in a difficult position with the strictest groupthink. It was for him above all about avoiding any event that could dent his image. He took no decision that had not been previously approved by his advisers and his administration. It was the latter who, during the years of his presidency, had taken and assumed the reality of power. That counted for a lot in the victory of Trump, who knew how to take advantage of his predecessor’s love of groupthink.
For his part, Obama had earlier likened Sarkozy to “a figure out of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting” who was “all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric” in his first volume of memoirs, A Promised Land (2020):
Conversations with Sarkozy were by turns amusing and exasperating, his hands in perpetual motion, his chest thrust out like a bantam cock’s, his personal translator... always beside him to frantically mirror his every gesture and intonation as the conversation swooped from flattery to bluster to genuine insight, never straying from his primary, barely disguised interest, which was to be at the centre of the action and take credit for whatever it was that might be worth taking credit for.
The two leaders had many sharp disagreements during their time in office that will have cast a shadow over their personal relations, such as on Turkish entry to the European Union, which Sarkozy opposed to Obama’s disappointment. There is a strong edge to all the exchanges with Obama that Sarkozy describes, with almost all his references to the former carrying a derisive overtone. One of the most virulent exchanges came over language in Sarkozy’s draft 2011 G8 communiqué on Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian President who had been forced to relinquish power earlier that year and was now on trial. In Sarkozy’s telling, his draft communiqué contained language calling for Mubarak to be given a “fair trial” and “appropriate care”, as he was suffering from a serious cancer and complications from a heart attack. Obama, according to Sarkozy, opposed this wording, arguing, “If we publish this communiqué, we are going to turn our backs on the Egyptian youth [who had protested against Mubarak].” This led to a heated exchange: “I reminded my interlocutor that he had, just a few months previously, received at the White House with full honours this same Mubarak, then presented as a great friend of the United States.” Sarkozy writes, “I concluded our exchange with a biting ‘With friends like you, who needs enemies?’” He, invariably, attributes Obama’s stance to “the obsessive care that the US president took over his image”.
“Nothing,” Sarkozy asserts, “could be allowed to dent [Obama’s image], not even his loyalties or friendships.”
Even during moments of co-operation, the edge remains. During the 2009 London G20 summit, when Sarkozy is arguing for the publication of a “blacklist” of tax havens against intransigent opposition, Obama leans over to tell him, “I am going to make you happy.” Sarkozy responds with, in his own words, “a certain brutality”, “It is not a question of making me happy. You have been elected to build a new world! Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world.” Nonetheless, Sarkozy expresses gratitude for Obama’s change in stance to support the blacklist, a support he regards as central in the adoption of the measure.
Despite their apparent private antagonism, Obama and Sarkozy staged a number of striking shows of public support, especially around the time of their re-election campaigns, both in 2012. One that particularly irked Sarkozy’s domestic political opponents was the televising of the beginning of a video conference between the two leaders in April 2012. Obama was filmed telling Sarkozy, “I know you are extremely busy with the election campaign and I admire the tough battle you are waging.” Sarkozy replied, “We will win, Mr Obama. You and me, together.” They had previously participated in a joint interview on French television during the 2011 G20 summit, broadcast simultaneously on France’s two main television channels. “Nicolas and I have an excellent relationship, we always have,” Obama told the interviewers, “… and I think Nicolas has consistently been a partner who is open-minded, who’s engaged, who’s energetic …”. For his part, Sarkozy perhaps indicated some of the tension in their relationship during their joint appearance:
We can be in disagreement on certain things. We are very blunt and we are very frank with each other. When he does not agree with something, Barack Obama calls me, and when I have a problem I tell him so. We are people who talk to each other, but friendship cannot simply be about the good times and the celebrations. It is as much about the difficult times as good times. That is what Franco-American friendship is all about.
David Cameron (British Prime Minister, 2010-16)
In contrast to President Obama, Sarkozy maintained a much more cordial relationship in office with David Cameron, who succeeded Gordon Brown as British Prime Minister. Sarkozy appears to have instantly struck a good rapport with Cameron, describing him as “young, intelligent, jovial and really very pleasant”:
I have rarely met a foreign politician with whom I spontaneously wanted to become friends or at least close. He was constantly smiling and cheerful. His courtesy and absence of ego in our personal relations impressed me. It was easy to have discussions with him and even to find agreement.
A fellow conservative, Sarkozy’s one disappointment with Cameron was his decision in 2009 to withdraw the Conservative Party from the European People’s Party (EPP), the main centre-right transnational grouping in the European Parliament, owing to its support for EU federalism. For Sarkozy, “this was the first step of that long and disastrous descent into the abyss of Brexit”. Cameron’s decision fulfilled a promise from the 2005 Conservative Party leadership, widely seen as designed to win Eurosceptic support. The Conservative Party instead became part of the non-federalist Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR).
Cameron and Sarkozy co-operated on a number of projects in office. The subject of Sarkozy’s first visit to Britain during Cameron’s premiership was the signing of the Lancaster House Treaties, which deepened Anglo-French defence and security co-operation. Along with the value of the co-operation in itself, Sarkozy says, “I hoped no doubt naïvely that by multiplying the partnerships we could avoid the catastrophe [of an eventual Brexit]”, writing thirteen years later. Probably the most significant co-operation between the two came over the NATO-led military intervention in Libya in 2011 that led to the fall from power of Muammar Gaddafi. “We shared the same analysis of the situation …”, writes Sarkozy. Their co-operation over the intervention culminated in a joint visit to Tripoli and Benghazi after Gaddafi’s fall.
In his own memoirs, For the Record (2019), Cameron himself recalled a particularly poignant gesture Sarkozy made during the Prime Minister’s father’s final illness, in September 2010. Cameron had begun to travel to the South of France, where his father was in hospital, but turned around after hearing that his condition had stabilised:
As I headed back towards Downing Street and PMQs there was an amazing intervention. Nicolas Sarkozy came through on the car phone to tell me that he had heard my father was unwell, and his office had spoken to the doctors concerned. They were worried that the stroke was potentially fatal. He said, “Whatever you do, David, turn around and get back on the plane, and I will get you to your father.”
Cameron then travelled to Nice, where a helicopter took him to see his father for what would be the final time. Sarkozy also insisted that the Cameron family stay at the French President’s summer residence in Marseille:
These were extraordinary gestures, which I will never forget. Sarkozy and I were to have some great collaborations, particularly over Libya, and some ferocious rows, almost always over the EU. But without his intervention I wouldn’t have seen my dad before his funeral. I will never forget that act of compassion.
One of those ferocious rows occurred during talks over stabilising the eurozone in 2011, when Cameron sought assurances to protect the UK’s interests in any changes that the eurozone members agreed. During the summit, Sarkozy told him, “You have lost a good opportunity to shut up … We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings.” Nonetheless, the row does not feature at all in Sarkozy’s Le Temps des Combats, and he appeared to draw a line under the disagreement, saying in February 2012 that “perhaps, had I been in David Cameron’s position, I would have defended British interests in exactly the same manner as he did”.