My wife Stacey is about to give birth to our second child and there are many decisions to be made.
We know that it’s a boy and we have already decided on a name. I’m off to do some filming in Newfoundland, the frozen armpit of Canada It’s not the best of times to be far from home. Below me is an endless, lonely sea seemingly stretched out for ever until it makes land by smashing itself on to the shores of a barren, isolated outpost No, I’m not going to the Isle of Wight for a weekend. I’m on a plane flying into the heart of nowhere

I’m on a plane flying into the heart of nowhere. But perhaps most of all, British politicians should share the conclusion drawn by their French counterparts from their very different circumstances – the keys to electoral success are humility and proximity.

And come to think of it, Tony Blair would benefit from such advice
More from Andreas Whittam Smith. But when globalisation and recession broke up this long established pattern, the French Communist Party was slow to adapt. In particular, it has been ineffective in representing the unemployed. And at the same time, the Front National has been able to widen its appeal to shop keepers and bosses of small businesses, all of whom feel threatened by cheap imports and aggressive supermarkets.British political parties could draw some obvious lessons from all this. She says that over the past 30 years, the French political class has been shifting to the left and that in many countries M. Chirac would not qualify as a right-wing politician.But there is more to it than that.

For the Front National attracts the very workers who used to support the French communist party. They switched partly because the Communist Party became discredited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They also changed allegiance because the old French Communist Party was designed for the post-war years of relatively full employment. Part of the explanation for this can be found in the analysis by Martine Le Pen, who is seen as a successor to her father as leader of the Front National.

Raffarin claims to incarnate the ordinary Frenchman and that he has distinguished himself from the usual overeducated, Paris-based politician. Like his predecessors, he is earning his full measure of disapproval.A third difference with British politics is that in France the far right parties continue to garner about about one sixth of the votes. The problem is the reverse in France – rapid changes of government with the result that no long-term programmes of reform can be carried through.This time, French opinion polls again showed that voters in the regional elections had a strong desire to use them to punish their Prime Minister It has made no difference that M. We have had only three, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Mr Blair.Our problem is that the famous revolving doors into and out of power don’t turn often enough. It still looks as if Mr Blair will win a third term in government next year. Which would mean that 18 years of Conservative Government would have been followed by at least 12 years of Labour. This happened to Raymond Barre in 1981, Laurent Fabius in 1986, M.