WHEN trying to understand French politicians—an occasionally dispiriting task—it is often the little details, the throw-away remarks that suddenly make things a bit clearer. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist party candidate, visited the offices of the centre-left newspaper Libération yesterday, and was asked about her promise to save money through reforming public services.

Isn't that a rather right-wing idea, she was asked? Not at all, she hastened to explain. Just look at the policy proposal of Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate, to replace only one in two civil servants who reach retirement age, as a way of trimming the vast armies of French "fonctionnaires", as government bureaucrats are known.

Now, you might think that given the astonishing sums spent on bureaucracy in France (all those chandeliered offices, a government limousine fleet of more than 142,000 vehicles), this was a fairly gentle reform.

Not to Mrs Royal. The right wanted to abandon civil servants, she gasped. And as for this "political arithmetic" of replacing only half the fonctionnaires who retire, she protested:

Does that mean that half of all civil servants are worthless? It is unworthy for a presidential candidate to expose an entire group of society to public condemnation.

Well, no, a free market liberal might answer. Why do you confuse someone's current job with their human worth? Plenty of government offices are full of thoroughly decent people stuck in drone-like, dead-end jobs. Perhaps they might be a great deal happier in a better job, perhaps one in a (gasp) thriving company? Perhaps change might be positive. And aren't civil servants tax-payers too? Might they, just possibly, feel angry about government waste that they witness at work?

But no, that is not how Mrs Royal sees it. She sees no reason to trim the number of civil servants. And if any of their job descriptions change, they should be given pay rises to compensate:

Civil servants should be told, we will be with you in these reforms, we are going to redeploy public services to where citizens most need them, and, in return, you will be better trained and better paid.

 One can only hope that, when redeployed à la Royal, they get to keep their limousines.