FRANCE:The day after a catastrophe, survivors pick through the rubble and take stock. From the extreme right to the extreme left, including the main opposition Socialist Party, every French political grouping outside Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential majority yesterday realised the results of Sunday's first round of legislative elections were worse than they had thought.
All but one of the 110 seats (of 577) won on Sunday night went to Sarkozy's majority. A little-known schoolteacher from the Pas-de-Calais department was the only socialist elected straight away. Seven of 11 government ministers - including prime minister François Fillon - were re-elected in the first round, gaining more than 50 per cent of the vote in their constituencies.
To add insult to injury, the closest allies of the failed presidential candidate Ségolène Royal risk losing next Sunday: Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Najat Belkacem, Vincent Peillon, Arnaud Montebourg, Patrick Mennucci, Julien Dray . . . even Jean-Louis Bianco, a Mitterrand-era socialist of stature, and co-director of Royal's campaign.
The defeat was expected. As Renaud Dély wrote in Libération newspaper, the French left "had neither plans nor an identity; since [ Sunday], it doesn't have much hope of saving the furniture. At least this new defeat condemns it to change everything, its leaders and its ideas, and to do so quickly."
The power struggle between Royal and François Hollande, the socialist leader and the father of her four children, was embarrassingly obvious when both made television statements, a few minutes apart, on Sunday night.
Royal has given repeated signals that she would like to take the party from Hollande. He has promised to step down at a party congress in November 2008, but if next Sunday's defeat is as severe as expected, there will be pressure for him to step down sooner. "If he resigned, I would be a candidate," Royal said last week.
In the meantime, socialist leaders continue to use the same argument that failed to mobilise voters before the first round. There is a danger of "smothering democratic debate" if the UMP gains too big a majority, Hollande warned at a press conference yesterday. "If there is no mobilisation, no consciousness, the equilibrium of our institutions and respect for basic rights are in peril."
Yet for all the peril, the socialists give the impression of being out of touch with reality. Yesterday, Royal announced her intention to "make contact with" the centrist candidate François Bayrou, whom she earlier blamed for her defeat, saying he would have become prime minister if only he had made a pact with her before the presidential run-off.
The former right-wing prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has a personal grudge against Royal, who "stole" his Poitou-Charentes region from the right in 2004. After the first-round results were announced, he criticised the lack of self-questioning in Royal's speech.
"She acts as if she had won the presidential election," Mr Raffarin said. "She doesn't recognise her defeat. She says: 'Stand up and be counted' to her voters, without explaining why they were defeated, why tomorrow should be any better."
However decimated their ranks, the socialists will form the opposition in the increasingly bipartisan National Assembly. Leaders of the communist party and the extreme right-wing National Front found it necessary to declare that their parties were "not dead" after Sunday's poll.