BBC's Newsnight profiles the French PM

Last summer, he astonished even himself by winning the snap general election called by President Jacques Chirac.

Since then he has rarely dipped neath 50% in the opinion polls.

Mr Jospin, aged 61, was born into a Protestant family in a Paris suburb, where his father was head of a school for the handicapped.

His early career was that of a teacher.

Most were amazed when this self-effacing economics lecturer was chosen by the newly elected President Mitterrand in 1981 to succeed him as head of the Socialist Party.

There was even greater surprise when, 14 years later, the former party functionary with no current party post, no elected national office and little government experience, not only imposed himself as the socialists' presidential candidate, but went on to take the lead in the first ballot.

Jospin then went on to win a very creditable 47% in the run-off.

Before the election political analysts were unanimous in predicting an easy win for gaullist prime minister Edouard Balladur.

Jospin 'no hope'

Jospin's task was to heal the rifts in his divided party and put in a credible performance against Balladur.

The Socialists' had been reeling since March 1993, when the conservatives crushed them in legislative elections and forced Mitterrand to share power with a hostile conservative majority.

From that point on, the party, which has lost nearly half its members since 1981, has been in free fall.

After a dismal showing in the European parliamentary elections, Michel Rocard's resigned, eliminating the most obvious Socialist presidential candidate

The party looked to outgoing European Commission president Jacques Delors, who was then leading in the opinion polls. But Delors stunned everyone by announcing that he would not run, largely for personal reasons.

But Jospin is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, nursery of France's top civil servants and politicians, including six of the past eight prime ministers.

Jospin was victorious in elections last June, and on a hard-left programme.

He promised the creation of 350,000 public-sector jobs, a cut in the working week from 39 to 35 hours without loss of pay, big increases in wages and social benefits, a halt to privatisation, a rise in the wealth tax and a rejection of the single currency's stability pact.

But since taking office, Mr Jospin has been sounding much less the ideologue, and more the pragmatic pro-European.

He now proclaims his ``full and total commitment'' to Europe.

During his first months in office, the supposedly grey and rigid Mr Jospin demonstrated an unsuspected flair for political manoeuvre.

He is seen as a loner without a politician's usual band of cronies, but he is gradually imposing his authority on his unruly troops.

Although he rarely dazzles, his power of intellect, mastery of his briefs and willingness to listen never fail to impress.

And with his new popularity and success, Jospin has learnt to relax, smile, even joke, though he will never be the back-slapping type.

Most Frenchmen now think him destined for even greater things although he has yet to come up with few radical reforms of his own yet.

But Mr Jospin may be the right man to help his nation through the disciplines of the euro.

But whether they like it or not, whether they like each other or not, Jospin and Blair are rivals.

They are rivals for the moral and actual leadership of the European centre- left; but also in a perverse way, they are domestic rivals.

If Jospin succeeds, with a more interventionist, more demand-oriented programme than New Labour, the success will be thrown in Blair's face by Labour dissidents.

If Blair succeeds while preserving the market orthodoxies of the 80s and 90s, never quite accepted in France, his success will be seized by the French right as a cudgel with which to beat "Jospinisme".

What are the politics of the left?

In one sense, this is inevitable. The two men are trying to answer the same question: what are left-of-centre politics for in a post- socialist world? In another sense, comparison is unfair, or misleading: the two men are sitting examinations with different questions. Britain and France are neighbouring but dissimilar countries which are at different stages in their political and economic cycles.