LRB | Alain Supiot : The Condition of France

"Having made the fight against delinquency the main plank of his electoral programme, he (Nicolas Sarkozy) had referred to young people in the banlieues as ‘riff-raff’ whom he intended to ‘power-hose’ off the streets. The fact that a minister could talk like a gangster and so put a match to the powder that had long been collecting in the most deprived neighbourhoods of the Republic, is not simply a sign of incompetence. It is first and foremost a sign that an age-old achievement of our Western juridical systems – the distinction between a public office and the person who occupies it – is being called into question."