There was a degree of relief for a majority of French Jews as the far-right National Front (NF) came second in local elections on Sunday.

There had been widespread fears that Marine Le Pen's party would beat the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative party, which came top with 29.5 per cent of the vote.

The NF won 25.4 per cent, emerging as the second largest party.

Independent conservatives that are likely to support UMP in national elections took 7.2 per cent, which means that the traditional-right bloc took 36.7 per cent of the vote.

The combined conservative/NF result adds up to 62.1 per cent of the vote. What remains to be seen is whether this will translate into a political majority, and who would be the leader: Mr Sarkozy or Ms Le Pen?

President François Hollande's socialist party, PS, lagged well behind UMP with 21.3 per cent.

The NF clearly benefited from France's growing anxieties about Islamism in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher massacres in Paris two months ago. Still, it fared less well than predicted by most pollsters.