Leading article: M. Sarkozy - a divisive force whose task is to unite

After a rip-roaring campaign, a sparkling television debate and two record turnouts, the voters of France have propelled to power the President they first thought of. Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant who always wanted to be President, has achieved his ambition. It is up to him now to show what he can do.

The French can have no complaints. In a democracy, the candidate who gains the most votes wins, and M. Sarkozy won convincingly. There were no hitches at the polling stations; the piloting of electronic voting went smoothly (Scotland, take note). Nor can any of those who contributed to his majority plead ignorance of what he stood for. If anything, M. Sarkozy's campaign was stronger on specific policies than on politics.

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The combination of his policies and his personality - by turns cocky, abrasive and charming - made him a divisive candidate. In prospect are a dose of free-market realism, longer working hours (longer, that is, than 35 hours a week), a review of the privileged conditions, including pensions, accorded to public-sector employees, and more rigorous accounting in health and education. These will not be popular. Nor will some of the social measures broached by M. Sarkozy: a shake-up of housing policies that concentrate the poor and ethnic minorities in fortress estates on the edge of French cities, and some form of affirmative action designed to bring the country's disaffected minorities into the mainstream. France has serious problems with inter-ethnic relations and youth unemployment that need to be tackled urgently.

M. Sarkozy's toughness on law and order, however, and the intemperate language he used as interior minister during the 2005 riots, has alienated many of those most in need of help. As the clear victor, M. Sarkozy can afford to be magnanimous; his priority must be to try to heal some of the divisions he himself exacerbated. French presidents have traditionally seen themselves as unifying figures, patrons of the nation as a whole; it is a tradition M. Sarkozy would be reckless to break.

Foreign policy hardly featured in the campaign. For the Socialists, riven over the European constitution, the terrain was too perilous. For M. Sarkozy, the perception that he was an admirer of all things American was a liability. Even his much-publicised campaign visit to London was less about cross-Channel relations than about wooing young French professionals with a promise of Blairite rewards for talent back home.

This omission, however, does not make this election less important outside France. M. Sarkozy's arrival at the Elysée may presage an improvement in relations with London and Washington, but M. Sarkozy's fluency in the political language of Atlanticism may be deceptive. M. Sarkozy has his eyes on reviving a European "mini-Constitution"; ideologically, he has more in common with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, than with Gordon Brown, and he has proved a doughty champion of French industry. It would be premature to forecast a new honeymoon in Anglo-French relations.

With the arrival of M. Sarkozy, there will be a dynamism in the Elysée of the sort we saw 12 years ago, before Jacques Chirac lost his first-term parliamentary majority. Those were volatile times, as the then prime minister challenged the old ways of doing things - and failed. M. Sarkozy's next test will be parliamentary elections in June. They will show whether France has really acquired a taste for the pace of reform M. Sarkozy advocates, or wants the new parliament as a potential brake. As of now, M. Sarkozy's right has the wind in its sails. Ségolène Royal's left has not been disgraced; François Bayrou's centre will ride again. They rejoin battle at the ballot-boxes in five weeks' time.