The package, as might be expected from a negotiating document, had something good and something bad for everyone – or almost everyone.

Seven parties reacted more or less positively to Di Rupo’s note – the “Yes, but” response as it was characterised. They included Open VLD, the Flemish socialists and Groen!, as well as the four French-speaking parties: greens, socialists, liberals and centre democrats. Then it was the turn of Bart De Wever on behalf of his N-VA, the big winner in last June’s elections on the Flemish side.

De Wever’s response was not a qualified yes, nor was it a qualified no. In a lengthy press conference, distilled into a 10-page rebuttal complete with pie-charts and bargraphs, De Wever demolished Di Rupo’s note, not on principle alone, but backed by close argument and supporting figures. “A lot of work has gone into this note, and that alone deserves respect,” De Wever said, before going on to make what commentators agreed was “matchwood” of Di Rupo’s edifice.

The budgetary proposals were “an attack on anyone who works hard, on anyone who runs a business and on anyone who has savings”, De Wever said. The proposals on unemployment, pensions and health care would have “little or no impact,” while the recommendations by the EU on social reform “have all been thrown to the wind”. Proposals on regional financing and fiscal autonomy were “bric-a-brac”. And the state reform chapter of Di Rupo’s note was “disastrous for the Flemish”.

That left the CD&V of acting prime minister Yves Leterme and Flemish minister-president Kris Peeters, who had left it to N-VA to respond before showing their cards. The response when it came was neither fish nor fowl: the note was a reasonable basis on which to begin negotiations, party president Wouter Beke said, but CD&V was not prepared even to start negotiations in which the N-VA was not included. A state of impasse, not for the first time, seemed to have been reached. The idea of starting talks without those two parties is simply untenable – but nobody seems to know what the alternative might be.

“Di Rupo needs to go back and rewrite his note,” suggested Peeters. And so the carousel begins once more to turn.

Di Rupo meanwhile went back to the King and presented his resignation as formateur, having achieved what he was assigned to do. The King declined, and in a rare political statement advised all political leaders to allow themselves a period of reflection, at least until after 11 July – the Flemish national holiday.

In the meantime, De Wever’s isolationist stance seems to have done him no harm in the eyes of potential voters: according to a poll conducted by the newspaper Gazet Van Antwerpen, 70% said he was right to reject Di Rupo’s note, while 40% supported new elections, and 43% thought it was time for Belgium to split. Het Laatste Nieuws, meanwhile found 54% of respondents to its own separate poll stood behind De Wever’s no-vote.

The crowd in Kortrijk during the commemoration on Sunday of the Guldensporenslag (The Battle of the Golden Spurs), the legendary battle of 1302 when a Flemish foot army defeated the French, definitely didn’t seem to blame De Wever, whom they welcomed with cheering and applause. “I cannot agree to so-called big reforms that would in reality do nothing more than tinker in the margins,” he told them. “The French-speaking parties have every right to defend the status quo, but they don’t have the right to impose it on the Flemish majority.”