Macron’s new enemy is the French Nigel Farage

First it was the Greens, then the Communists and on Wednesday Jean-Luc Mélenchon bagged the big one, the Socialist party. In announcing an ‘agreement in principle’ between his La France Insoumise (LFI) and the Socialists, Mélenchon became the most powerful figure on the French left and, according to the electorate, the principal adversary of Emmanuel Macron in next month’s legislative elections.

The Socialist party’s National Committee will meet in Paris this evening to examine the fine print of the agreement, but they are expected to endorse what is officially called the New Social and Ecological People’s Union. Not that everyone within the party is happy with the alliance. Several senior figures, many of whom served in Francois Hollande’s government a few years ago, have declared their opposition to the alliance; one, former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, quit the party on Wednesday.

The dissidents don’t trust Mélenchon. He says he doesn’t want to take France out of the EU but this is the man who, during the 2017 presidential campaign, drafted a Plan A and a Plan B.