THE FRENCH LEFT has devised a way to distract media attention away from President Nicolas Sarkozy – female mud-wrestling, The Independent writes:

In the red corner, we have Martine Aubry, the Lille bruiser, who "won" the party's leadership contest by 0.05 per cent of the vote. In the white corner, we have Ségolène Royal, the Poitou hellcat, who accuses her opponent's camp of "cheating" and "stealing" victory.

No contest between the Left and Right has been fought with more invective and more dirty tricks than this riveting contest between the Centre-Left and the Centre-Left. The poisonous hatred between the two camps was apparent long before the vote of Socialist party members on Friday night split almost exactly 50-50.

The problem is not the narrowness of Friday's vote, nor the evidence of voting irregularities. Such practises have long plagued France's alternative "party of government". (As one party official explained: "In the North, there are genuine members with fake cards. In the South, there are genuine cards held by fake members.") The real problem is that personal relations between the camps have grown so venomous that a de facto schism seems inevitable. A formal split into two parties of the centre-left is unlikely in the short term. It is no longer inconceivable.