Chirac plays his ace

Five days to go until the crucial French vote on the EU constitution, yet another clutch of polls (three, to be precise) put the No vote up at 53%, and Jacques Chirac decides to play his ace: the President of the Republic will, his office has announced, make what is known here as "a solemn declaration" to the nation, on both television and radio, at 8pm on Thursday evening.

This is a very different exercise from the two TV appearances he has made to date in the campaign. In the first, he failed utterly to reassure an audience of young people whose concerns for the future focused, admittedly, on almost everything but the constitution. Chirac was finally, and somewhat humiliatingly, forced to conclude: "I have difficulty understanding your fears."

In the second, a live interview, he fared marginally better, managing more or less to hammer home his two key messages: that the treaty does enshrine French values, and that if the French reject it they will a) lose most of their clout within Europe, and b) never be able to negotiate anything better - or at least anything less "Anglo-Saxon".

Neither of these appearances has made enough of an impact on public opinion to reverse, for more than a few days, the prevailing trend. The Elysée Palace insists that the third will: this time there will be no unruly debate, no impertinent questions. Chirac will read a carefully prepared 10-minute text uninterrupted, from behind his desk. He is, in short, throwing the full weight of his presidential authority into the campaign.

Will it be enough? There are plenty of reasons to doubt it.