Nicholas Sarkozy reminds voters of his qualities

As the details of the killings in Toulouse emerged this week, barely a month before the first round of voting in the bitterly contested presidential elections, every single candidate, save perhaps Marine Le Pen, seemed paralysed by what could charitably be ascribed to a reflex of genuine decency.

Political realism was not far behind. It became obvious, before the killer's identity was known, that the same weapon had been used, the previous week, to murder three French paratroopers garrisoned in the area. The soldiers were of North African and French West Indian origin, and their regiment had served in Afghanistan.

To put it bluntly, this was the work of a white supremacist or an Islamist terrorist; Anders Breivik or Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. But nobody, least of all the embattled Nicolas Sarkozy, wanted to call it wrong: everyone remembered how Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish premier, lost a general election after the Madrid bombings, which he had too hastily ascribed to ETA, the Basque separatists.

In the end, it was the pundits who couldn't help themselves and described it as a "racist murder" sparked by the "vicious tone of Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign", with phrases such as national identity, and spats over halal meat. Sarkozy, an old pro, kept his own counsel; Marine le Pen, however, who deals in well-rehearsed outrage, vowed to sue the columnists who suggested she had inspired a gunman. In so doing, she managed to paint Sarkozy as the figure of restraint after it transpired that the killer, Mohammed Merah, was a self-radicalised, home-grown Islamist with a long criminal record and a stint in Pakistani fundamentalist camps.

Meanwhile Francois Hollande, the supposed shoo-in for president, who had been consistently leading in the polls since Christmas, made the rookie mistake of announcing that he would "put his campaign on hold" until the full horror of the triple murders was known. By doing so, he played straight into Sarkozy's hands. The president immediately concurred: his campaign, he said, would also be put on hold. What this meant was that he could return to his job as president, leading the deeply affected nation through such difficult times, while Hollande stood on the sidelines.

Sarkozy is never better than when he has his back to the wall. This was a make or break moment, and he played it perfectly. He delivered the funeral oration for the young paratroopers, speaking soberly and refusing all interviews. His hard-line interior minister, Claude Gueant, who includes religious communities in his remit, called for Jewish and Muslim leaders to speak together against racism. When the police special unit, RAID, identified Merah within two days, laid siege to his flat and eventually killed him, the national reaction was a collective sigh of relief.

The entire episode has, in fact, reminded the country of two key moments in Sarkozy's career: first when he was an interior minister in the early 2000s, determinedly focused on law and order, and second, the episode when, as Mayor of Neuilly aged 28, he surged to national prominence after he negotiated for hours with a madman calling himself the "Human Bomb". The lunatic had taken hostages at a primary school, and Sarkozy went into the building alone to offer himself in exchange for the children. He came out, eventually, with the children in his arms and the "Human Bomb" was shot by police. There are powerful echoes here.

Yesterday, back on the campaign trail, Sarkozy addressed a packed hall in Strasbourg, vowing to fight racism and terrorism, and keep France's communities together. Francois Hollande, meanwhile, was mostly silent, though one of his spokesmen, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, scored an own goal by criticising the "inefficiency" of the police.

With a month still to go in the campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has struck such a sincere note, may look back at this week as the moment his luck turned.