Ségolène Royal's decisive victory in the French Socialist Party's primary to select its presidential candidate is a real breath of fresh air in that country's - and Europe's - politics.
On an 82 per cent turnout she won 61 per cent of the vote, winning in 94 of France's 95 departments with more than 50 per cent of the poll in 87 of them. By selecting a woman with a genuine chance of winning next year the party has responded radically to a widespread sense that France needs change if it is to tackle the major problems it faces.
Ms Royal presented herself as a modernising outsider in this contest, more in touch with ordinary people, closer to the concerns of provincial France, yet well able to set her own political agenda through a savvy use of media reaching beyond her party's confines. Her success has caught the popular imagination and bids fair to rattle the confidence of the ruling right wing. After a rancorous campaign from which male chauvinist condescension was rarely absent, her principal opponent, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, paid her a compliment that echoes the party's political mood: "The Socialists have one candidate and we will win against the right." She will control the forthcoming campaign in what promises to be a fascinating election next May.
She has much ground to make up on broad political, economic and foreign policies, which were left vague during the campaign. She combines a pragmatism reminiscent of Blair and Clinton on employment and working conditions with an authoritarian attitude to public security. She has yet to make clear how she thinks France should respond to economic globalisation and international competition. She favours a positive engagement with the EU, although several of her other foreign policy pronouncements were ill-judged.
Alongside this goes a willingness to embrace grass roots participation and accountability, including a call for citizen juries to evaluate politicians' performances. She endorses family values but sympathises with the under-privileged.
The challenge will be to clarify and make concrete these policies in coming months as Ms Royal faces up to her probable opponent, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. He too appeals for a radical mandate to change France and has a similar impatience with its old elites. The country's social conflicts involving immigrant suburbs and youth unemployment sit uneasily with its world-beating industrial technologies, enviable social services and abiding cultural excellence. Such paradoxes deserve a vigorous presidential debate.