Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and leading light of the French Socialist Party, remains in jail today after having been denied bail in a hearing in New York on Monday on charges of s-xual assault and attempted r-pe — leaving the French political world in turmoil.

Strauss-Kahn is, it must again be stressed, entitled to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. But political judgment does not always wait on its legal counterpart, and unless he is not just acquitted but is promptly and comprehensively vindicated — an outcome that looks increasingly unlikely — his political career is over.

It’s true that France has traditionally been more tolerant of s-xual adventures than many other countries, and Strauss-Kahn will earn a certain amount of sympathy (particularly if he continues to languish in jail pending trial), but nowhere near enough to rehabilitate him — particularly since the French are understandably sensitive to the accusation that their culture encourages such behavior. They will want the Anglo-Saxon world in particular to understand that they do know the difference between seduction and r-pe.

The Socialist Party is putting a brave face on things; secretary-general Martine Aubry has asserted her authority, attempting to sound sympathetic to Strauss-Kahn and his alleged victim, and promising that the party’s pre-election calendar, which calls for candidates to nominate by the end of June for primaries in October, will not be changed.

These are bad times for the European left. Of the eight largest EU countries, the left is in power only in Spain, and it is widely expected to be defeated there when elections are held in or before next March. The centre-right has acquired an ascendancy not seen for half a century or more. France’s socialists had hoped that would start to change next year, with Strauss-Kahn being favoured as their standard bearer to take on and beat centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy.

I confess that I was already sceptical about their chances. Sure, they’ve done well in local elections and were riding high in the polls, but the same was true in 2007, when centre-right incumbent Jacques Chirac had abysmally low ratings and the socialists had a popular challenger in Ségolène Royal (who had crushed Strauss-Kahn in the Socialst Party primary). Sarkozy nonetheless beat her fairly comfortably, 53%-47%.

But that’s all academic now. Whether the socialists were in good shape before or whether there’s been some historical revisionism going on, we can agree that they now have a major problem.

The other thing the media all want to talk about is Marine Le Pen, new leader of the far-right National Front founded by her father, Jean-Marie. Fascism is always s-xy, especially when fronted by a woman (our own Pauline Hanson was a milder version of the same thing), and there’s no doubt the National Front has received a big boost from the change in leadership.

Whether the Strauss-Kahn affair also works to its benefit is another question. Disarray among the socialists certainly increases the chances that Le Pen will emulate her father’s achievement of 2002 and beat the left in the first round of next year’s election, thus earning a place in the run-off against Sarkozy. But in that case she would lose by a huge margin, just as Le Pen père did to Chirac, because the left’s voters would turn out to support Sarkozy against her.

To get a more respectable result, what Le Pen really wants is for Sarkozy to finish third, putting her into a run-off with the left. She would still lose, but many of Sarkozy’s supporters would back her, or at least stay home, rather than vote for Aubry, or François Hollande, or Royal (his ex), or whoever else the socialists now come up with. And the resulting chaos in the centre-right would make the left’s recriminations after 2002 look like a garden party.

That intoxicating outcome now looks less likely. The big beneficiary of the weekend’s events is not Le Pen but Sarkozy. He is not out of the woods yet, but his path to re-election looks a good deal smoother than it did a week ago.