Sarkozy in all-out bid to boost campaign A plan to nail tax-avoiding big companies, a crackdown on immigration, a swipe against halal meat, a verbal punch-up with a former Socialist prime minister during a three-hour television appearance - and a promise to retire from politics if he loses the presidential election. Even by the all-action standards of France's "omni-president," this has been a high-volume week for Nicolas Sarkozy as he battles to overcome an apparently stubborn opinion poll deficit in the run-up to the first round of voting on April 22. Nor is he done yet: on Sunday, Mr Sarkozy is aiming to attract more than 30,000 supporters to a televised rally just outside Paris at which he will attempt to regenerate the enthusiasm that carried him to victory in 2007. The president's camp insists all is still to play for, despite a strong feeling among the Paris punditry that the election is there for the taking by François Hollande, the opposition Socialist challenger. "That doesn't mean anything," says Jean-François Copé, head of Mr Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party. As the campaign goes on, people will see that only Mr Sarkozy has the capacity to face the crisis. That is what is beginning to come together. Mr Sarkozy has certainly shown all of his campaigning teeth. In a bruising debate with former premier Laurent Fabius on Tuesday night, he retorted at one point: "I don't have any style lessons to learn from someone who supported Dominique Strauss-Kahn [the former International Monetary Fund chief brought down by a sex scandal]." The president's big push follows months in which Mr Hollande has led him in the polls. Maddeningly for Mr Sarkozy, just as he seemed to be closing the gap in first round polls, Mr Hollande seized back the initiative last week with his proposal to impose a marginal tax rate of 75 per cent on incomes above €1m. More worryingly, Mr Hollande's lead for the decisive second round, on May 6, has so far remained above 10 points. And there is some urgency: under election rules, all candidates, including the minority challengers, receive equal broadcast time from March 16. Mr Sarkozy has used the intervening time to unleash what Guillaume Tabard, a commentator for Les Echos newspaper, called "a strategy of carpet bombing." A stream of policy proposals include imposing a new tax on multinational French companies which use foreign profit centres to minimise their tax dues in France, giving companies the ability to negotiate plant-level labour hours and salaries, cutting social charges on employers and holding referendums to drive through social reforms blocked by special interests such as trade unions. With an eye on winning back votes from Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front, Mr Sarkozy has also proposed cutting immigration in half, imposing tough new conditions on benefits for newcomers and tougher penal conditions for delinquent youths and criminals. He also fuelled a dispute with Muslim and Jewish leaders by saying he favoured labelling meat to show if it had been ritually slaughtered - a response to Ms Le Pen's populist polemics against halal meat. Polls show many of these policies are popular - but still Mr Sarkozy's poll numbers have so far moved little. "It is the great mystery of the Sarkozy campaign," wrote Mr Tabard. Professor Pascal Perrineau of Sciences Po university, puts this down - like most commentators - to Mr Sarkozy's personal unpopularity. The anti-Sarkozy sentiment is very apparent among the electorate. The left is not a majority in France, but there is an anti-Sarkozy desire for change. Mr Sarkozy is aware of the problem: he spent some 45 minutes of his marathon television grilling on Tuesday apologising for perceived past transgressions and rebutting the label of "president of the rich" stuck on him by his opponents. But Prof Perrineau says Mr Sarkozy has more to do to convince voters. He is accumulating proposals every day, but he has not yet outlined a real project. He needs to show where he will lead France over the next five years - to go back to the heart of the crisis and how France will deal with it. That way he can create a real difference with François Hollande because [Mr Hollande] is more tied by a left which is reticent about adapting France's social system. That is what Mr Sarkozy will attempt to lay out on Sunday. If, on May 6, it does not deliver victory, Mr Sarkozy was emphatic yesterday that would be the end of his political life. "I'll bow out," he declared.