French left set to seal alliance to thwart Macron

With Emmanuel Macron having become the first French president in 20 years to secure a second term of office last month, the focus is now on the country's Parliamentary elections in June, where his centrist La Republique en Marche party hopes to build on his personal victory, but other political parties are jostling to position themselves to secure a share of the power.

Macron beat far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the head-to-head second round of the presidential ballot, with far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon having come in third place out of the 12 candidates in the first round.

Anne Hidalgo, of the traditional Socialist Party, came a distant 10th, so the parties of the left are now rallying around Melenchon's party La France Insoumise, or LFI, to form some sort of united front to make Macron take them into account.

The Communists and Greens have already agreed to side with LFI, and Pierre Jouvet, a negotiator for the Socialists, told Europe 1 radio that "the different parts of the left are not as irreconcilable after all", while speaking of "some adjustments" to a policy being necessary as the two sides were "a few steps from a historic agreement".

It is understood that the Socialists have already agreed to back some of Melenchon's key policies such as reducing the retirement age to 60, in opposition to Macron's plan to raise it, which was a hugely contentious issue in the presidential race.

The left parties also need to agree on who will stand where, so as not to divide their vote.

A poll of voting intentions carried out at the end of April showed why vote consolidation is so important. Out of the 577 seats on offer in the National Assembly, Macron's party was forecast to increase its share from 267 to as much as 368, with Le Pen's party representation rising from the eight it won in 2017 to nearly 100 seats.

The Greens will have candidates in 100 seats, with 30 of them regarded as realistically winnable, and the Socialists hope to add to their current 25 assembly members, but Francois Hollande, the last Socialist president before Macron was elected, has warned that being part of any wider left-wing bloc could result in the disappearance of the party.

As soon as Macron's presidential victory was confirmed, Melenchon called on the electorate to "elect him prime minister" in what he referred to as a "third-round win "in the Parliamentary elections, following two rounds of the presidential ballot, to keep Macron in line.

But with no so-called cohabitation of a president from one party and prime minister from another having happened since 2002, statistics show that French voters tend to vote for the party of a winning presidential candidate in the assembly elections as well.