Testimony, by the French right's presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, has just been translated into English. This manifesto is a fascinating insight into the mind of the man who wishes to run France. His brutal assesment of the state of France will please neither Francophobe nor Francophone, as he paints a picture of a country in dire straits, stuck in the past, unwilling to grasp the realities of modern life, whether it be its growing Muslim problem or its relationships with rest of the world.

He makes it clear that he believes that France has lost as many of its youngest and brightest to emigration, a similar toll to that inflicted by the devasting First World War. Its brightest leave France for better opportunities, whether it be for education, career advancement or starting a new business. Of course, the number of these young adults is falling anyway, as the country has a negative birth rate. As with most of Europe, its population is getting older and there are not enough of the young to pay for the entitlements promised to the old. Those that are young suffer as high as 20% unemployment in some parts of France.

London has become the seventh largest French city. She ceaselessly sucks in thousands of young French people, who set up there - including my own daughter, as it was easier to suceed there than at home. Or worse, to suceeed here has become so shameful that a young person wanting to get on is obliged to leave.

He laments that France has borrowed the worst bits of the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon (ie UK/US) way of doing things, succeeding in nothing except decline against its competitors. He writes that his goal in running for president is to put France on the right track, one that is looking to its future, not holding on to its past for dear life.

What is most frustrating about the book is not the writing of Sarkozy but the comments, thankfully as footnotes, from the translator, Robert Harnels. Now many of them are rather useful for someone who does not know French politics or France well, but others display rampant prejudice. Harnels repeatedly refers to Sarkozy as right-wing when he is in fact centre-right and the parties he is involved with as anti-European when they are merely Eurosceptic. The only political sector that is truly anti-European in France is Le Pen's Front National, which is extreme-right/national socialist in outlook (or if you prefer socialist nationalists like the UK's BNP). The inaccurate interjections do get a bit tiresome.

That said, this is a fascinating insight into the mind of a man who would be President of France. That the book has sold 300,000 copies and is considered radical in France will be  shocking to most of readers of this English-language version. But it is a most impressive piece of political writing from an impressive man.