World

In a sensational result that not even Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself could have imagined, his New Popular Front looks set to come first in the French elections. Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble party is forecast to be second forcing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which led the first round, into third place. Mass tactical voting to stop the RN seems to have worked far better than anyone expected. Rather than simply deprive the RN of an overall majority, we have a hung parliament with no clear sense of what happens next. Macron must now negotiate with parties to try to form a coalition government. ‘The will of the people must be strictly

This week France has drifted from surprise to confusion and panic as Sunday’s second round vote approaches. The bien-pensant centre-left weekly Nouvel Obs’ cover says it all. Black lettering on a red background menacingly warns: ‘Avoiding the Worst’; ‘The National Rally at the gates of power’. Yet the National Rally is an officially recognised legitimate mainstream party. France is not staring into the abyss. But if we were to indulge in such gloom-ridden musings what would be France’s post-electoral worst case scenarios. Let us begin gently. Marine Le Pen called this ‘an administrative coup d’etat’ In the event the National Rally cannot form a government on Monday, moves are already afoot by Macronist

Apart from Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s a fair bet that most people’s reaction to the Nobel prizewinners for literature this century is, who? Arguably the most recent, Jon Fosse, is an exception but the majority of winners don’t really stand up to the weight of the award. Annie Emaux? Abdulrazak Gurnah? Louise Gluck? It’s hard to avoid the impression that the judges were swayed by ethno-gender considerations rather than outright lifetime literary merit. I asked him about Albania obtaining European Union membership and he got tetchy This week there died, and today was buried, one man who really did merit the award for which he was nominated 15 times,