Violent ambition

The French rioters may not change society, as some of them probably hope. But they may succeed in changing the government. Eleven days into the riots, the political centre still appears paralysed. The ailing president, Jacques Chirac, has been all but invisible. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin – who has talked about the need to understand the sources of this discontent – has been a picture of hand-wringing ineffectiveness. Only the ambitious interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has shown m...