In France the second round of the regional elections were held on Sunday 21 March. Le Monde has presented the results in the following way:

What this means is that in metropolitan France the right now holds just one region – Alsace (in blue). The left, therefore, made one gain in total – Corsica, where it has a relative majority. A dissident socialist also holds one region – the one in pink (Languedoc-Roussillon).

The left came out of the election pretty well. Its overall vote was the highest for a long time. Perhaps more importantly still, there was only one region – Brittany – where the socialists and the ecologists could not agree a joint list. That said, there are still a lot of divisions within the left generally and within the Socialist party. In addition, the abstention rate was still very high. So, the public was not very galvanised.

If the left came out of the election pretty well, then President Sarkozy came out of it pretty badly. The right-wing coalition has started to splinter. For example, former PM Dominique de Villepin has announced that he is creating a new movement. President Sarkozy insists that the regional elections were, well, regional and that no national significance should drawn from them. Therefore, he has ruled out a reshuffle.

By contrast, Prime Minister François Fillon has emerged politically unscathed. His popularity ratings have been going up as Sarkozy’s have been declining. Oh dear. This is bad news for Fillon. The newspapers are full of supposed rifts between the two. I am surprised he has lasted this long, but his prime ministerial days are surely numbered, precisely because he is so popular.