Can Mélenchon unite the French left?

Shortly before the first round of the French presidential election I was handed a campaign flyer by one of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s activists. On one side was his photo and on the reverse the headline: ‘With Jean-Luc Mélenchon another world is possible.’ What sort of world? A leftist utopia in which the minimum wage would be raised from its current €1,302 to €1,400 net per month, new hospitals would be built, the retirement age would be lowered to 60, and there would be a fixed price for petrol, food and energy prices. Oh, and there would also be a Sixth Republic.

Quite how Mélenchon would pay for all this, given the state of the country’s finances (France’s national debt is 112 per cent of its GDP), wasn’t explained. But it didn’t need to be. Mélenchon is as good a salesman as he is a politician, and in that regard, he is the polar opposite of Marine Le Pen, who never looks entirely convinced that she knows what she is talking about.