Kosciusko-Morizet aims to emulate Boris in contest for mayor of Paris In a Paris bistro behind the French parliament, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet shook hands with politicians and voters and sat down to steak tartare and chips. NKM, as she is known, is a kind of would-be Parisian Boris Johnson - even if she's unlikely to be caught dangling from a zip wire. She is an ambitious right-winger, never far from the spotlight of TV cameras, who wants to claw back the mayoralty of one of Europe's most important cities from the left, while securing her place at the top of her party. After two stints as a minister in Nicolas Sarkozy's government, and a tense spell as his right-hand woman during his failed re-election campaign, she has plunged into one of the most brutal election battles in French politics: the fight for Paris city hall. Her surprise entry into the race means the Paris mayor's contest, with a final vote in March 2014, is now totally dominated by women - unheard of in France's notoriously sexist world of politics. On the left, Anne Hidalgo, deputy to the popular outgoing Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, is likely to run. On the right, Kosciusko-Morizet, 39, wants an open primary race and is currently leading against Sarkozy's former justice minister Rachida Dati. For the Greens, the housing minister Cécile Duflot has yet to say whether she will stand. Critics on the left say Kosciusko-Morizet is haughty and bent on a lifetime's ambition to become France's first female president. She has been described as the ultimate in "bourgeois chic," and in government her black high heels were used to illustrate front pages on sexism in politics. But as a hard-nosed engineer who started her career with military service, colleagues say she is down-to-earth. She is famous for lobbing killer one-liners at opponents within and outside her party. Jacques Chirac once called her "l'emmerdeuse" - "the pain in the neck." But while she is popular in right-wingers' polls, she needs to reach beyond them for the Paris race. Asked about the "battle of the women" headlines, and speculation that women politicians act differently to men, Kosciusko-Morizet sighed. "It's a complicated issue," she told the Guardian in her first UK interview of the mayoral campaign. I'm not a fan of attributing particular qualities or faults to being a woman. It's often a dead-end because they start by saying you're 'softer', 'closer to nature' and finish by saying just look after the creches. I'm an engineer with military training - I always took care not to get shut into a discourse on gender. That said, I think women are a little less interested in the attributes of power. Sometimes one has the impression with a man that winning an election is something in itself. There's less immediate satisfaction in that for a woman, more of an interest in what can be achieved. Paris, run for 12 years by Delanoë, has had many ideas imitated, such as its fake summer beaches along the river and its bike-hire scheme. It continues to battle the dominance of the private car. But the world's biggest city tourist destination, which has a population of just over two million, still nurses a complex relationship with its suburbs beyond the ring road. Kosciusko-Morizet, who became MP for Essonne, west of Paris, at 29 is currently mayor of Longjumeau, a small town near the capital. Apart from the daily bread of housing costs, traffic, crime and cleanliness, she wants to campaign, London-style, on Paris's ability to pull in and hang on to business talent. The question is not that there are so many French in London. The question is why did they leave and why aren't there as many Londoners in Paris?" she said. Paris's failure to secure the Olympics is still "an open wound." She is interested in London's Tech City and wants to meet Johnson, who she sees as "an interesting personality," if provocative when he talks about the French. More Bastilles to be taken "Paris must return to what it was throughout history," she said, "a guiding light. A place of revolutions that opened the way to new democratic regimes and new ideas: in the 18th century, during the French revolution or with the second world war resistance, when as De Gaulle said, Paris was liberated by the people. Paris should be a city that shows others the way, there are plenty more Bastilles to be taken. Journalists remind her how in Sarkozy's election campaign she was asked the price of a Paris metro ticket on a radio show and replied "around €4" when the price is €1.70. She cleverly gets round this now: "I replied with the price of a combined ticket in from Longjumeau in the suburbs," warning the media to be more aware of wider costs outside the city limits. Paris can't breathe if it's locked in the corset of the périphérique ring road; Paris can only breathe with its suburbs. Kosciusko-Morizet was born in Paris and grew up in the smart 15th arrondissement in a family that has seen several generations of French mayors. Her brother is a major web entrepreneur. She served as both environment and digital development minister under Sarkozy. As the first minister in France to join Twitter, she once gave tweeting lessons to French MPs and senators, leading some on the right to brand her a moderniser. But she rejects the "aristocrat" label that clings to her, citing a mix of French and eastern European roots. I have a very mixed family, my four grandparents came from very different social and geographical backgrounds. Paris was a fusion of their horizons. My mother was from a right-wing Catholic background, my father was from a background more on the left. Paris's most famous right-wing mayor, Jacques Chirac, is remembered for his embezzlement conviction and extravagant food expenses - he and his wife's personal food bill over eight years at city hall was £1.4m, including £40 a day on herbal tea. Kosciusko-Morizet brushed aside any suggestion that these scandals may affect the right's chances now, saying the left has had its own scandals. Some warn that a right-wing primary for Paris would increase tensions in the bruised and battered UMP party. Last year, a contested vote for a new party president sparked political mayhem. Kosciusko-Morizet agreed the right had to "rebuild itself." But she supports a primary open to all Paris voters and doesn't think a contest against Dati is a risk to the party. She remains a staunch critic of Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National. Sarkozy's move right to appeal to Le Pen's voters, when Kosciusko-Morizet was his campaign spokeswoman, put her in a difficult position. She said she voiced her differences inside the party, not the media. I thought and I still think, that in 2012 Sarkozy was the president France needed. On whether she would one day run for president herself, she smiled carefully: "It's not something on my mind at the moment. I have never reasoned in terms of career plans. Politics is about passion and today all my passion is in the Paris campaign. Paris mayoral candidates Anne Hidalgo, 53, Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, currently favourite in the polls Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 39, former environment minister under Nicolas Sarkozy. Early polls show she is favourite to win the primary race for a right-wing candidate Rachida Dati, 47, former justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy. Currently neighbourhood mayor of the seventh arrondissement in Paris. First on the right to declare ambitions to run as Paris mayor Cecilé Duflot, 37, Green party housing minister in the current Socialist-led government. This month told Le Journal du Dimanche, she hadn't taken a decision yet on whether to stand.