LIKE a man who was trying to hammer one nail into the wall, President Jacques Chirac ended up destroying not only his apartment but the whole building. The metaphor belonged to Serge July, the editor in chief of Liberation, and it turned out last night to be vividly accurate.
One by one, Mr Chirac's men went on television to express their regret, sorrow, even anger at the results. The problem, said Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, the former budget minister, was "not our ideas but the way they were defended".
With a tinge of irony, the outgoing Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, wished his successors good luck, adding that he would work to build "a political force in which French people will believe".
Even in their jubilation, Socialist leaders were aware that it was time a French government won the confidence of its people. It will take some doing to convince France - and the rest of the world - that this victory means more than another episode of French political musical chairs. The one word every Socialist politician used last night was responsibility".
"We'll get French society moving," Mrs Martine Aubry, the daughter of Mr Jacques Delors and the newly elected member for Lille, said. "We have no right to let people down. We will do what we promised." Mrs Aubry is likely to be minister of labour in Mr Lionel Jospin's government.
Conscious that unemployment is the greatest concern of French voters, the Socialists put it at the centre of their programme and insisted that it be a priority in European policy. They will be judged chiefly on their ability to succeed where French governments have failed for two decades: to reverse the blight of unemployment which affects 12.8 per cent of the French work force.
Before his election victory, the Socialist leader did his best to reassure France's nervous business community about his party's commitment to reducing the working week from 39 to 35 hours without a decrease in pay. The programme would be spread over five years, Mr Jospin said.
"As for the speed, I have always said I wanted to act over the long term," he explained. "I don't want a sudden blaze that will later have to be doused with the cold water of realism and disillusionment." The left's victory could have far reaching consequences for French business.
There will be no new nationalisations, as there were under President Mitterrand in 1981. But the left may reverse privatisations that had been planned by the Gaullists. These include Air France - which last week announced its first profits in 18 years the Thomson CSF defence electronics firm and Thomson Multimedia.
Mr Jospin has promised to reconsider the closure of the Renault Vilvorde factory in Belgium; the French government owns 47 per cent of Renault. Another important test case will be the privatisation of France Telecom, from which the Juppe government hoped to reap some 30 to 50 billion francs (£3.5 - £5.8 billion). The Socialists say they will organise a referendum within the company. Their Communist allies want the privatisation halted.
Although the left says it remains committed to reaching EMU by January 1st, 1999, it is not clear whether its economic policies will be consistent with even a loose interpretation of the Maastricht criteria. Revenue from privatisations would have helped reduce budget deficits, and there is no indication how the left will replace it.
In their sober reactions to the left's victory last night, centreright politicians repeatedly said they would be "vigilant" on Europe to prevent the Jospin government undoing what they had achieved. "We built Europe," the Socialist EuroMP Dr Bernard Kouchner replied angrily to Mr Michel Barnier, the outgoing Minister for European Affairs.
The fact that 11 of 15 European governments are now leftwing - including, for the first time simultaneously in 50 years, the French and the British - is likely to create a different, more socially oriented EU.
Foreign policy is traditionally the preserve of the French president, but Mr Jospin has made it clear he does not intend to give Mr Chirac carte blanche. A group of French diplomats has proposed the establishment of a foreign policy council along the lines of the US National Security Council to smooth out differences between the two men.
During the campaign when the left was repeatedly accused of wanting to sabotage European integration Mr Jacques Delors, who may this week become foreign minister, came to its rescue.
Mr Delors said that France had spoken with one voice during two earlier "cohabitations" from 1986 until 1988 and from 1993 until 1995. He argued that Mr Jospin's conditions for compliance with the Maastricht criteria were perfectly consistent with the text of the treaty.
