Le quotidien qui Mark

As expected, French voters gave Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party a hammering in the run-off elections for regional councils. The left opposition won everywhere except Alsace and two overseas regions.

The revived Socialists are jubilant and dreaming of national power while no-longer-Super Sarko is locked in the Elysée Palace having a rethink with François Fillon, his Prime Minister [picture above]. Over on their hillside at Saint-Cloud, old Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine are toasting the revival of the far right National Front.

So it's curtains for the hyper-president, or "hyper-loser" as Le Progrès newspaper called him today ? Le Sarkozysme is finished and "progressive", left-thinking, France is reborn, as Libération says ?

Not so fast. Three years since crowning him, France has certainly fallen out of love with King Sarko I and his frenetic, confusing reign. But he has two years to correct things before the next presidential and parliamentary elections and he can count on a mess in the Socialist party.

The picture for him is not as bleak as some think. Take his rush to reform, the shake-up of work habits, the welfare state, hospitals, schools, the law courts and so on. Two polls today show that the French are not as hostile to these reforms as we thought. A BVA survey for Les Echos found that 50 percent want him to continue with at least the same pace, while only 40 percent are in favour of a pause. Le Parisien's poll, by CSA, found that one third want to slow the pace of reform. This might reinforce the idea that a lot of Sarkozy supporters abstained from voting to show their disapproval of the President.

Also on Sarkozy's side is the unique nature of the French system -- at least compared with the rest of Europe though not Russia and the USA. National power goes not to a party but to the man or woman who wins direct election to the monarchical executive presidency. The Socialist opposition has failed to do that since 1988. It has no clear candidate for the next time, in 2012, but is pledged to choose one next year from a bunch of feuding hopefuls. Six years ago, they were in an identical position. They had swept the board in regional elections and seemed poised for power, but Sarkozy beat them in 2007.

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The prospects for a replay of that have been boosted by the triumph yesterday of Ségolène Royal, the party's defeated presidential candidate. Royal, who is rated somewhere between a flake and a saint, scored 60 percent of the vote in her Poitou-Charentes region. Radiant as ever, she made absolutely clear that she wants to get a second crack at Sarkozy. That will mean beating Martine Aubry, 59, the party leader who has gained stature with the regional vote [picture below]. But the polls still show that the public's favourite Socialist for the presidency is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Beyond personalities, the Socialists also have to come up with a plan for government. They are popular as local councillors and mayors, but have yet to produce a national programme that answers the desire among much of the electorate for a return to the left. Sarkozy's team take great comfort from opinion polls that show that the French do not believe that the Left -- meaning Socialists and the rag-tag army of Greens and other leftists -- would do any better than his centre-right administration. Aubry3-4279834xntsw_1902

Within a day or two we should have a clearer idea of Sarkozy 2.0, as the relaunched presidency is being called. He is getting plenty of advice, some of it from rivals in his own camp who would be happy to get their own chance to run in 2012. They are telling him to slow down, simplify his message and act modest.

Many of Sarkozy's members of Parliament in the Union for a Popular Movement now regard him as a liability. They want him to get back to conservative basics and stop playing with leftwing ideas like carbon taxes. They also want him to get rid of the opposition personalities who he hired for his administration. Le Figaro, the national daily that is Sarkozy's most loyal supporter, warned him today that the vote "obliges the President to set a new course for the final two years of his five-year term."

Just about everyone is telling the President to change style. He needs to get off the stage and back up onto the Elysée throne, in the manner of his more lofty, statesmanlike predecessors. He will have a help on this front next year when he takes his turn as chairman of the G8 and G20 groups of nations.

We have already seen a couple of vintages of Sarkozy Nouveau after stumbles in 2008 and last year. But the kinder gentler brand quickly faded as the higher octane Super Sarko reasserted himself. The countdown to April 2012 is now ticking. It will be an interesting couple of years.