Who really comes out of this electoral race smiling?

Certainly not President Francois Hollande's Socialists. They may have "saved the furniture" - as the French expression has it - by part time diploma course business holding on to at least five regions.

And they did the moral thing (in their own eyes) by standing down in the two regions where the FN had the best hope of winning.

But look more closely and you can see the Socialist disaster. In the five years since the last regional election, their vote collapsed by 16%.

Worse, china data sim card while in office President Hollande has overseen the inexorable rise of a party he says is a threat to the country's very existence. It is his own failures - in employment, wages, security - that have fed the FN's popularity.

Finally one might add that in two regions - the North and Provence - which have been Socialist strongholds, there is now not a single left-wing assembly member.

That is Attractions in Hong Kong the direct result of the party's abdication. From now on in those regions, the only opposition is the FN.