The growing extremism of France’s Green party

On Sunday evening I met three left-leaning French friends for a picnic in a Parisian park. We’d hardly begun the pâté before they were arguing. One confessed that she hadn’t voted in the second round of the regional elections. The other two were aghast. Why hadn’t she done her duty as a good socialist? She had voted in the first round but she baulked at supporting a radical left-wing coalition comprising the socialists, the greens, the communists and the far-left France Insoumise.

As it turned out, her vote wouldn’t have made a difference. Valérie Pécresse, the incumbent centre-right candidate was comfortably re-elected in the Ile-de-France with 45.6 per cent of the vote, 11 per cent more than Julien Bayou, the Green candidate of the left-wing coalition.

All the same the coalition picked up a substantial number of votes, despite the growing extremism of some within the Green party. In the last year the Green Bordeaux mayor banned Christmas trees and the Lyon mayor damned the Tour de France as sexist and environmentally inappropriate.