Sarkozy's worry seems to me to be that he may be identified by middle-class voters as the head of the police that whack their kids over the head.

Last night, after incidents in the Latin Quarter (lol, I always love the sound of that), he was very careful and uncharacteristically diplomatic in making clear that violence was carried out by extremists (right and left) and "hooligans", and had nothing to do with the demonstration, which had gone off without a hitch. And that he had given instructions to the police not to attack genuine student demonstrators because of provocateurs mixed in with them, etc.

The worry of a link-up between students and the banlieues seems to me to be based on that: if middle-class kids join underclass kids in burning cars, how will Sarko avoid nasty fallout for the middle-class kids and a bad image for him with the conservative electorate? It's all the difference between trawling for votes far to the right by shitting on underclass youth, and looking after the kids of his core electorate.

As to the possibility of a link-up, it's not entirely far-fetched. It seems there's no essential difference of view between the students and the banlieue kids about the CPE. Neither group sees the move toward liberalization of the labour market as a good thing for them. Secondly, there's some intersection between the groups, especially at high-school level. Many of the underclass kids are school drop-outs, most are not. The more successful of them go on to university studies. Communication between the two groups is therefore possible.

Anyway, my feeling on hearing Sarkozy's comments in the Latin Quarter late last night was that he was "walking on eggs".