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French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin leaves the Hotel Matignon. (AFP)

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the long-suffering prime minister who was expected to bow out after the EU referendum debacle, served three years in the worst job in French politics and saw his ratings plummet to the lowest in the country's modern history.

Appointed in May 2002, his first words of advice came from another former prime minister of the centre-right Raymond Barre, who said his role was to "durer et endurer" -- stick it out and soak it up.

With good humour and broad shoulders, this is what Raffarin loyally did -- absorbing attacks more properly directed at his master President Jacques Chirac until his authority all but ebbed away . Like all French prime ministers he was ready to be discarded.

Raffarin, 56, can claim several important successes during his tenure. In 2003 he oversaw changes of the pensions and health insurance systems which were radical by French standards and triggered widespread opposition from trade unions and the left. He also pushed through a new decentralisation programme.

But heavy defeats for the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party at regional and European elections last year prompted Chirac to order a slowdown of controversial reforms and a switch to a more "social" domestic agenda. Raffarin survived a reshuffle but his powers were circumscribed.

Squeezed between more ambitious players such as Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, Social Affairs Minister Jean-Louis Borloo and ruling party chief Nicolas Sarkozy, Raffarin was clearly on borrowed time.

As a new wave of social protests broke out earlier this year, the prime minister's popularity took a nosedive -- falling even further as the "no" camp took the lead in the campaign on the EU constitution.

A well-intentioned initiative to abolish an annual bank holiday in order to raise money for the elderly backfired two weeks ago when the vast majority of the public said they preferred to keep the day off. At that point his disapproval rating -- 76 percent -- was the highest in the Fifth Republic.

Born in 1948 into a prosperous family in the central city of Poitiers, Raffarin distinguished himself by being one of the few French leaders to have first pursued a career in the private sector. He was a coffee salesman in the 1970s, and later head of a communications agency.

He began his political career as a supporter of president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and later was vice-president of Liberal Democracy -- a pro-market party that joined Chirac's UMP. He was a senator for his home region of Poitou and joined Chirac's first government in 1995 as minister for small business.

After Chirac's election victory in 2002 over far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Raffarin was chosen as prime minister because of his reputation as an unassuming provincial. It was Raffarin who coined the phrase "la France d'en-bas" - the ordinary people down below -- with whom he identified.

Fully aware that he was not marked out for greatness, Raffarin never lost his sense of proportion -- even when vilified by street demonstrators and the left-wing press. He told interviewers he would happily return to a less exalted existence once his duties as Chirac's punching-bag were over.

(Agencies)

bow out: remove oneself from an obligation（從容引退）

ebb away : flow back or recede（消逝，衰退）

decentralisation :（地方分權，排除集中）

reshuffle: a redistribution of something（改組）

nosedive: plunge nose first; drop with the nose or front first, of aircraft（俯沖）