“Of course, there are no real French Conservatives, are there?”
It depends on how you define “Conservative”. There are French royalists, still! And by a traditional measure of the word “conservative”, that’s pretty conservative!
If by “conservative” you mean people who believe in the American “Ayn Rand” model of unregulated trade (export manufacturing to China, because it’s best for stockholders; import poisonous food from China, because it’s cheap) and unregulated capitalism no, there is nobody in France who believes in that, and there never will be. Sarkozy is about as “conservative” in that sense as French people come, but he opposes American Ayn Rand style “free” trade completely, and although he wants to make French labor law more supple, he has never even hinted at privatizing national health insurance or privatizing national pension insurance, because even he thinks that such ideas are economically unsound and crazy. Nobody in France thinks like Americans do, economically. So, if economic organization is the measure of “conservatism”, then there are no French conservatives, there never have been any French conservatives, and there never will be any French conservatives.
Of course, because France has never believed in unfair trade practices with foreign countries. (stiffled laughter)