Charlemagne

CRUSHED by defeat at French local elections, President François Hollande reacted this evening with uncharacteristic boldness, firing his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and replacing him with Manuel Valls, the ambitious, centre-left interior minister. Mr Hollande’s rout at the polls on March 30th, when his Socialist Party lost over 150 big towns to the right and far right, made it impossible even for the cautious president to continue with the old regime. His choice of Mr Valls is as risky as it is potentially encouraging for economic reform in France.

The decision to appoint the 51-year-old Mr Valls came at the end of a long day of consultations and rumours in Paris.

A CRUSHING defeat at French local elections has intensified pressure on François Hollande to reshuffle his government. At a second round of voting on March 30th, Mr Hollande’s Socialist Party lost over 150 towns, most of them to the opposition centre-right. This morning, the French president was holed up at the Elysée, the presidential palace, consulting close advisers over reshuffle plans, which could be announced as early as today.

The Socialist losses were devastating. Although, as expected, the party hung on to Paris, where Anne Hidalgo becomes the capital’s first female mayor, the rest of the country snubbed the ruling party.

FOR Libération, it was a “slap in the face”. For Le Monde, another daily newspaper, it was an “earthquake”. The first round of voting in French municipal elections on March 23rd was a clear snub to François Hollande, the French president, whose Socialist Party did worse than polls had predicted in several towns. If there was a symbolic victor ahead of the second round of voting on March 30th, it was Marine Le Pen (pictured), the leader of the populist National Front.

First-round voting is only a partial guide to final results next weekend. But a few early conclusions can be drawn after the polls closed last night. The first is that the French are fed up with Mr Hollande.

GEERT WILDERS' party barely even took part in Wednesday’s municipal elections but, as usual, the far-right populist managed to make himself the centre of attention. In a post-election speech in The Hague, one of just two municipalities (out of 403) where his Party for Freedom ran candidates, Mr Wilders took his anti-immigrant rhetoric to a new low. “In this city and in the Netherlands, do you want more or fewer Moroccans?” he asked the crowd. “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” the crowd roared back. “Then we’ll arrange that,” he finished. The crowd laughed, as though the ethnic threat were some sort of comedy routine.

SPRINGTIME in Paris is usually a celebratory moment when the city turns inside out, pavement cafés put out their tables and diners prolong their lunch breaks in the sun. The past week, however, as a menacing smog has set in over the city, the warm weather has brought concern and irritation. On March 17th, for the first time in 17 years, the government enforced new rules allowing only motorists driving cars with odd-numbered registration plates to enter the French capital and use the roads in the surrounding departments.

Worries about smog began after pollution exceeded safe levels for five straight days.

FIRST, conversations of Nicolas Sarkozy (pictured), France’s former president, were secretly recorded by one of his own advisers. Now it turns out that he has had his phone bugged for nearly a year by investigating judges. More than the first snooping affair, these latest bugging revelations, published in Le Monde, a newspaper, on March 7th, could damage Mr Sarkozy’s chances of a comeback ahead of the 2017 presidential election.

The latest affair is unprecedented for a former president of the Fifth Republic.

JUST two weeks before voters go to the polls for the first round of countrywide local elections, the French political right is struggling to assess the fall-out from what has been dubbed “Sarkoleaks”. On March 5th transcripts of private conversations between Nicolas Sarkozy, the former centre-right president, and some of his advisers were leaked to the French press, prompting anger, indignation and embarrassment.