The strange revival of France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is on the march once more, rising up the polls and laying bare the ineptitude of the Socialist party. While their candidate in the presidential election, Anne Hidalgo, is stuck on two points, Mélenchon is on 17, behind only Marine Le Pen, on 23, and Emmanuel Macron on 26. It was a similar story in the 2017 election when the veteran left-winger received 19.6 per cent of votes in the first round, while the Socialist party’s Benoît Hamon mustered a risible 6 per cent.

There’s a contradiction to Mélenchon in that while at 70 he is the oldest candidate in the race, he is the most technical savvy in getting his message across. On Tuesday evening he repeated his 2017 hologram trick, addressing an audience live at the Grand Palais in Lille while his 3D image was beamed onto stages in 11 towns or cities across the country, from Le Havre in the north to Nice in the south.