Two splendid programmes, spot the difference

PROMISES, promises. Should French voters take Jacques Chirac, their conservative president, and Lionel Jospin, their Socialist prime minister, at their word? If so, it will hardly matter which one wakes up on May 6th to preside for the next five years over a country which is simultaneously a nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the third-biggest economy in Europe. In either case, France will supposedly be richer, more competitive, more caring and—above all, given the voters' preoccupation with crime—safer. Indeed, Mr Chirac has borrowed the New York concept of “zero tolerance”. For his part, Mr Jospin has borrowed a Tony Blair line, pledging like Britain's prime minister to be “tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime.”