Right beats Left hollow in French polls

French President Jacques Chirac formally reappointed his down to earth Prime Minister on Monday after the centre-right’s landslide vict...

French President Jacques Chirac formally reappointed his down to earth Prime Minister on Monday after the centre-right’s landslide victory in parliamentary elections, starting the clock in a dash for reform.

The Conservatives’ surge in Sunday’s voting ended the Left’s five-year grip on the National Assembly and shut the far-right National Front out of the lower House altogether, less than two months after its leader Jean-Marie Le Pen shocked Europe by finishing runner-up to Chirac in a presidential election.

Chirac’s newly founded Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) and its allies won a commanding 399 seats in the 577-strong Assembly against just 178 for the Socialists and other Leftists, who are now outnumbered by more than two to one. ‘‘The President of the republic has entrusted Jean-Pierre Raffarin with the functions of Prime Minister again and asked him to form the government,’’ Chirac’s office said.

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Re-elected after mass street protests against Le Pen’s anti-immigrant policies, the head of state now has a strong hand to cut taxes, ease labour laws and reform pensions after five years of paralysing ‘‘cohabitation’’ with a Left-wing government.

Meanwhile, the shattered Socialists vowed to work out where they had gone wrong after Jospin’s disastrous bid for presidency and then their drubbing in the parliamentary poll.