In an ideal world, the good standing of his conservative mainstream opposition in Sunday's local elections would provide a glimmer of hope for François Hollande. The French president's Socialist party came in a dismal third, behind the far-right National Front. But Hollande might conclude there is still a possibility to start a civilised centrist dialogue on economic reforms, and would then keep supporting the zealous reformist drive of Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
The odds are that the French president will draw the opposite conclusion from the vote, and decide that it's time to stop rocking his party's boat. Vociferous opposition to his reform isn't just coming from the National Front: the far left, both within and outside the Socialist party, keeps criticising Hollande's year-old "supply shock" policies.
Signs that the limited reform programme was coming to a halt were already showing before the vote. There were clearly hopes that the stronger-than-expected Eurozone recovery and the European Central Bank's quantitative easing programme might help spare Paris some difficult decisions.
Hollande's only serious pledge as a presidential candidate was to stop unemployment from rising. As of the most recent report, he was failing. France was one of only three Eurozone member countries with a rising unemployment rate in January. At 10.2 per cent, it is above the Eurozone's 9.8 per cent. Now the president will be tempted to wait it out, since the labour market should improve in coming months whatever he does - or rather doesn't.
France's unemployment curse predates the 2008 recession. It will not be lifted by a regional recovery, or by any one radical magic reform. A stronger labour market will only emerge after a series of patient, determined and unspectacular changes.
Those changes require a government with enough authority to take on entrenched interests and convince unions and employers to negotiate. That authority is now clearly lacking, only two years before a presidential election whose campaign has de facto just started.
