Last Tango in New York

In my last post I wrote in passing about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s chances as a candidate for the French presidency next year. Since then everything has changed. Even if the case against DSK were to collapse totally at some point, which would require something as unlikely as the victim resiling from her statement, there now seems little chance that he will be a presidential candidate or continue at the IMF. Though his closest supporters, Le club DSK, seem to think otherwise.

Toby Young, who worked in New York as a journalist for five years and wrote about his experiences in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, has made a neat comparison of DSK’s position and the plot of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. (Bûcher translates as pyre, for being burnt at the stake on!)

Tim King, who regrettably writes less frequently for Prospect magazine than in the past, makes some interesting points about “the cosy elite” who run France and their solidarity with DSK in recent days. An example of this is the attitude of Bernard-Henri Lévy, in translation here. BHL could exist only in France - here he is on BBC2’s Newsnight in March explaining his role in catalysing France’s involvement in Libya.

Tim King is probably right in predicting that the left will now have to vote for Sarkozy to keep out Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election next year.