OVER the past two months the French have been called to the polls four times: for two rounds of presidential voting, followed by two for parliament. On June 17th, at the fourth and last of these, voter turnout, perhaps unsurprisingly, reached a record low. But the result was far better than François Hollande could have hoped for. The French president's Socialist Party took 314 parliamentary seats, well above the 289 it needed to secure a governing majority by itself. This gives Mr Hollande a free hand to govern as he sees fit, without the need to turn either to the Greens, who took 17 seats, or to the Left Front, led by the fiery Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which got just ten. He has secured a bigger majority than those won by the Socialists in 1997 and 1988, although still short of the sweeping result achieved after François Mitterrand was elected president in 1981. The new parliament will be younger, more feminine and more ethnically diverse than the old one, which was dominated by grey hair and suits. Some 40% of deputies are first-timers. The Socialists now control almost all of France's political institutions: the presidency, the National Assembly, the Senate, all but one of the 22 regions and most local government. It has been a huge snub to the right. Several of its leading figures lost their seats. Michèle Alliot-Marie, a former foreign minister, is out; Claude Guéant, a former interior minister, also failed to win. With just 229 seats, the UMP of Nicolas Sarkozy, the defeated ex-president, is heading for a bitter leadership struggle and much introspection about what went wrong. Among the newcomers will be two deputies for the far-right National Front, their first since 1997. They do not include Marine Le Pen, the party leader, who narrowly lost to the Socialists in the Hénin-Beaumont district (she is demanding a recount). But her 22-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, was elected, as was Gilbert Collard, a lawyer, both in the south.

There were also some big upsets. Ségolène Royal, Mr Hollande's former partner and a defeated presidential candidate in 2007, was roundly beaten by a Socialist dissident, Olivier Falorni, in the seaside town of La Rochelle. In a tweet that went viral ahead of the vote, Mr Falorni was backed by Mr Hollande's current partner, Valérie Trierweiler, although the president himself officially supported Ms Royal. In the south-west François Bayrou, a perennial defeated centrist presidential candidate, lost the seat where he was first elected in 1986. His MoDem party will now have just two deputies.

What will Mr Hollande do with all his power? He has been campaigning ever since deciding to run for the party primary in the spring of 2011. So it has been hard to distinguish what part of his speechifying—calling “the world of finance” his main enemy, or the rich “grasping and arrogant”—has been purely electoral. Now he will be forced into real choices. For he has, in effect, campaigned with two contradictory messages: a pledge to keep to France's commitment to bring down the budget deficit to 3% next year (and to eliminate it by 2017), and a promise to increase benefits and fight austerity in Europe.

Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, has insisted that France would meet its targets “without austerity”. The government plans some immediate fiscal changes on July 4th, a day after Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, outlines his legislative plans to parliament. They will include a vast array of tax rises—on the annual wealth tax, companies, oil firms, financial transactions and inheritance—focused on the rich and on business. There may be an extra 3% dividend tax to be paid by companies. Mr Sarkozy's planned VAT increase will be abolished. Further tax rises are expected in the full 2013 budget, due in September, including a new top rate of income tax of 75% on incomes over €1m.

Yet despite all these extra taxes, the government will find it difficult to reach its targets without spending cuts. With public spending at 56% of GDP, higher than in any other European Union country except Denmark, there has been no shortage of warnings. The European Commission says that, without further efforts, the deficit will be 4.2% in 2013. Earlier this year the Cour des Comptes, the national audit office, which is chaired by a former Socialist deputy, urged a greater effort to cut spending. Mr Hollande claims to be waiting for the auditors to report again, early next month, before he finalises his plans. This bizarre charade, designed to give him political cover for hard decisions, is supposed to allow the president to express shock at what the auditors will find.

The government is ducking an even more crucial issue: France's loss of competitiveness inside the euro zone. In an unusually blunt outburst this week, Laurence Parisot, head of Medef, the employers' federation, said that she feared the “strangling” of companies (see Schumpeter,). Besides tax rises, there are plans to tighten redundancy rules for profitable firms and to raise the minimum wage. When David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, said cheekily that he would “roll out the red carpet” to French firms seeking to flee, the Socialists dismissed it as cross-channel rivalry. The real danger of Mr Hollande's plans has yet to sink in.