After its third consecutive defeat for the presidency, the French left has found itself in a state of crisis, andNicholas Sarkozy, the Edward Seagaesque - tough and uncompromising - figure of French politics, is heading to the Elysée. In some respects, the issues in Sunday's election that propelled Mr. Sarkozy to the presidency over the Socialist Party's Ségolène Royal are not unlike those that confront Jamaica: How to use politics to restore national confidence and what strategies are best to create growth and employment.

On these matters, France has been Europe's laggard. Its growth rate hovering at around two per cent, a budget deficit above the European Union's three per cent, and unemployment of around nine per cent, but more than double that for people in the 19 to 24 age group. Like in Jamaica, there has been much debate about how to rejuvenate France and lift it out of what Donald Rumsfeld, the combative and con-servative former U.S. Defence Secretary, once referred to as "Old Europe".

On the basis of the election result, Mr. Sarkozy, who won 53.4 per cent of the popular vote, to Ms. Royal's 46.6 per cent, clearly won the argument. At the core of Mr. Sarkozy's agenda is, as he framed it, "putting France back to work".

In other words, Mr. Sarkozy wants to overhaul France's lavish social welfare system that is sustained by Europe's heaviest tax burden of nearly 50 per cent of GDP. He expects to begin with labour market reform, loosening the country's 35-hour workweek. Tax and public sector reforms are obviously on the agenda.

Many in France fear such reforms; this perceived Anglo-Saxsonisation of France by a man dubbed as an "American neo-con with a French passport". And many, too, fear the man; they see in his tough, combative style a latent racist, not helped by his positions against immigration and his branding of young rioters of mostly black and North African origins as "scum".

In the end though, Mr. Sarkozy proved a more credible candidate for the Elysée than Ms. Royal, the far more likeable Socialist. Her agenda was far too woolly. And therein lies the crisis of the French left.

Ms. Royal and the Socialists agreed that there was something wrong with France and French confidence; there is this sense that the country is in terminal decline. They want to change, to create jobs and growth while maintaining the "French way". The problem is that Ms. Royal could not offer a credible agenda; at least not one convincing the majority of the electorate.

The Socialist and the French left, if it is to return to its heady days of François Mitterand, will have to find a way to remake itself so as to retain its existing base and embrace much of the centre, in the fashion of Britain's Labour Party and other mainstream socialist parties on the continent. That is unlikely to happen ahead of France's mid-year parliamentary election, so Mr. Sarkozy won't have to co-habit with ideological opponents and should have a relatively easy time pushing his reform programme through the legislature.

The difficulty will be his ability to build a national consensus. He will have to find a way to convince those who didn't vote for him that his programmes remain the better way.