Will Mélenchon upend the French political establishment?

In his memoirs, Charles de Gaulle famously wrote that he had always possessed ‘a certain idea of France’, a phrase that evoked a mystical past of grandeur and glory, as well as an ‘eminent and exceptional destiny’. In French it is a lovely expression, but it’s doubtful the great man had in mind the angry parents of state-school children revolting against incumbent politicians in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where on Sunday night there was a kind of mini-insurrection by Nupes, the ungainly coalition of left-wing parties that threatens to upend the French political establishment and deny President Emmanuel Macron majority control of the National Assembly during his second five-year term.

The scene at Cocotte, a modest but lively ‘brasserie gastronomique’ on the avenue du Maine, felt like a victory party for the local chapter of Nupes (the acronym for the New Ecological and Social People’s Union). Although no one at the celebration had yet won anything officially, they had won something important – the possibility of a return to power for a left that just three months ago seemed moribund.

The voting in the first round of the legislative elections had concluded at 8 p.m., and about 25 people, including the Nupes candidate for the 10th Assembly district, Rodrigo Arenas, were glued to the television in a private room, watching their leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, declare, based on projections, a numerical nationwide victory over Macron’s renamed party, Ensemble. As it turned out, Nupes won first place in the overall vote by a hairsbreadth, 26.11 per cent to Macron’s 25.88 per cent, although on Monday morning Mélenchon accused the Interior Ministry of ‘manipulating’ the returns to give the President’s party a better look. But on Sunday night all that mattered to the Nupes supporters at Cocotte was that Ensemble had not locked up a legislative majority in the first round and would have to fight for its survival during the following week.