“We achieved the political objective that we set ourselves.” When he addressed chanting supporters at his election night soirée on 19 June, the French left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was in bullish form. He told those packed into the sweltering Élysée Montmartre concert hall in Paris that the parliamentary election had brought a “total political rout” of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, and a historic opportunity for the left. The first projections on BFM TV, relayed by a giant screen in front of the stage, suggested that his left-wing alliance, the Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale (Nupes), would have up to 190 MPs, and Macron’s allies no more than 230, in the 577-member National Assembly.
After Mélenchon scored 22 per cent in the presidential election in April, narrowly missing out on a place in the run-off vote, his parliamentary campaign posters had matched his face with the words “Mélenchon prime minister”, in the hope that he could form a government at odds with Macron’s agenda. The Greens, Communists and much-depleted Socialists – more established parties with which Mélenchon’s France Insoumise (France Unbowed) has often had contentious relations – had scored low single figures in April. For the parliamentary election, they accepted Mélenchon’s leadership and most of his programme in the newly minted Nupes alliance.
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