Dior, bling, bikinis – Nicolas Sarkozy picks his cabinet

France's height-challenged president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has chosen yet another glamour girl to join his harem (sorry, cabinet). Christine Kelly, 39, a former television presenter who also happens to look great in a bikini, has been made Minister for Overseas Territories.

Given the recent civil unrest in the islands, including Kelly's native Guadeloupe, it seems odd to appoint someone with no experience in politics. Sarko has muttered something about Kelly being attractive as well as in touch with the modern world - whatever that means. My view is that he simply needs a bit of arm candy to replace former justice minister Rachida Dati, fired in January. Yet in France, politics and glamour go hand in hand.

Other beauties in Sarko's cabinet include human rights minister Rama Yade, whom a male friend of mine dined with recently. "I have never," he gasped, "seen a sexier woman!" Finance minister Christine Lagarde is no slouch in the elegance department either: I saw the 53-year-old at the opera recently and she is even more striking in person than in pictures.

That's before we start on Sarko's opponent Ségolène Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate he defeated two years ago: she was famously pictured in a bikini in 2006, enviably trim for 52.

And while some say Dati's penchant for bling was her downfall - posing in her beloved Dior in Paris Match, plus the rumours of her many lovers, including, it is said, Sarko before he married Carla Bruni - political insiders think the real straw that broke the camel's back was more unglamorous. That was her confrontation, in Arabic, at the Senate with Fadela Amara, a minor minister (sadly, not good-looking). "Why don't you shut your mouth?" Dati screamed to Amara. "Why don't you shut your arse?" Amara shot back.

It is a far cry from Gordon Brown's ministerial team: Europe minister Caroline Flint is striking but not in the same league as Dati or Yade. As for Harriet Harman: well, let's just say that a woman who boasted about never spending more than £50 on a handbag would be unlikely to go far in France. French women are just naturally more glamorous than Anglo-Saxons.

Still, I can't help but notice the spring wardrobe of Sarko's very beautiful and very tall wife, Carla Bruni: little Jackie O suits paired with flat shoes. In Sarko's orbit, women must not outshine him. And they had better not be taller, either.