Not holding her tongue.

Fadela Amara might be a vital member of the French government and a potent symbol of president Nicolas Sarkozy’s desire to break with the politics of the past, but it hasn’t stopped her from speaking her mind whenever it suits her.

Indeed Amara has started the new year in the same fighting form that has characterised her first months as junior minister for urban policy, by making it clear that she wouldn’t be voting for her boss in the 2012 presidential race.

Now it might seem a little early to be looking so far ahead, but Amara – a supporter of the Socialist party although no longer a member – was weighing in on the debate surrounding the future leadership of a party which has been in disarray since last May’s presidential elections.

Her comments came in an interview in the most recent issue of the political weekly “Le Point” in which she had less than tender words for the way in which the Socialists had been tearing themselves apart since last year’s defeat.

She accused leading figures of being more interested in their own political futures and stressed the need for the party to decide whether it wanted to define itself as Social Democratic or Left

Amara softened her remarks about her boss somewhat when she later faced the assembled throng of television cameras by insisting that Sarkozy was trying to introduce the social reforms the country needed, but she would only consider voting for a Socialist candidate next time around. If the party didn’t put forward the right person, she would abstain.

While Amara’s comments – especially about Sarkozy - might not play too well with some of her government colleagues, they do not seem to have harmed her reputation among the general public. She figured as the fourth most popular and capable minister in a recent poll.

But some members of the president’s ruling Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) party, have questioned his wisdom in keeping firebrands like Amara in government as part of the “rupture” with the old way of doing politics.

In October last year for example, she described government plans to introduce DNA testing for immigrants as “disgusting”.

And she had a public war of words with the UMP’s spokeswoman, Nadine Morano, in November.

When Morano questioned Amara’s apparent silence the day after rioting broke out in a Parisian suburb, the minister’s hackles quickly raised to fire the salvo that “although Morano was a nice person, she got on everyone’s nerves and everybody wanted to try to avoid her.”

Echoing perhaps the sentiments of many within the party and probably more than a few within the government, Morano responded that Amara’s behaviour and language was inappropriate for a government minister. “If you don’t agree with her, you find yourself the target of insults,” Morano said. “It might be deplorable, but parliamentarians have got used to it.”

For the moment though Sarkozy seems to tolerate, and even appreciate, Amara’s outspokenness.

Rest assured though, his eyes, and those of many others, will be upon her when she delivers her-long-awaited proposals on urban regeneration later this month.

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