Amid all today’s grim uncertainty, here, via the Daily Telegraph, is a spot of light relief — some splendid news about France’s highly decorative First Lady:

France’s first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, has confessed to no “longer feeling left-wing” after three years of marriage to the country’s conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy….Only two years ago Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy had claimed that she was “instinctively left-wing” after at one stage supporting her husband’s Socialist rival in the 2007 presidential elections…But in Monday’s interview with Le Parisien newspaper, she said her previous political persuasion was only due to her belonging to a “community of artists.” “We were bobo (bourgeois bohemians), we were left-wing but at that time I voted in Italy (her native country).” I have never voted for the Left in France and I can tell you, I’m not about to start now. I don’t really feel left-wing anymore,” she said. Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy has French nationality and can thus vote in next year’s presidential elections, when her husband is expected to stand for a second five-year term…
A recent poll suggested that 66 per cent of the French approved of Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy as France’s first lady. She has notably been credited with improving her husband’s cultural credentials. Last week, Mr Sarkozy rattled off a string of obscure, highbrow films and books he claimed to have recently watched or read. “I am not joking,” he told a throng of incredulous journalists.