Interesting times

Just happened on a breakdown of the French presidential elections results via the Libération web site.  It gives the result for the nation as a whole, and a breakdown by departments and individual communes; for the first and second rounds and for the two previous présidentielles as well.  It also gives the size of the electorate in each commune, the number voting and the number of voters who expressed a valid vote.  A must-see for anyone with a connection to France and an interest in politics.  In brief, Sarko is out, decisively, but by no means by a landslide.  Hollande is in - France's first socialist president since François Mitterand whose 14-year presidency ended in 1995 - with a Keynesian agenda of stimulating the economy out of recession, in stark contrast with the EU's policy of austerity.  Perhaps we'll see in my lifetime who was right.

Of more interest is the outcome of the imminent législatives, in which French voters will elect their parliamentary representatives.  I imagine that not a few European heads of government will be hoping for another cohabitation: a left-wing president and a right-wing prime minister, which would cripple Hollande's hopes of pushing through a radical programme.  Such a result is not unthinkable, since the result of the presidential election has, I think, as much to do with Sarko's personal unpopularity as with any degree of political conviction, and the narrowness of the vote could conceal an underlying tendency to the centre-right. Whatever the result, it can hardly be worse, some might say, than the lumbering coalition now in power in a neighbouring Member State.