Key figures to know in France’s left-wing New Popular Front bloc
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A demonstrator holding a placard reading "NFP in the booth, RN in the urinal" at a rally in Nantes on July 7, 2024.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
PARIS – France’s left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), an alliance of parties hastily assembled after President Emmanuel Macron called a surprise snap parliamentary election, looked set to score a shock win in the July 7 vote
If initial projections are confirmed, Mr Macron will be required to name a prime minister from the bloc. The initial estimates are typically accurate.
The NFP – made up of the Communist Party, the hard-left France Unbowed, the Greens and the Socialist Party – has not said who would be its pick for prime minister. The following are some of its best-known figures:
Jean-Luc Melenchon, hard-left France Unbowed party
Mr Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of French far-left opposition party La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, delivering a speech during a rally on June 30.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mr Melenchon, 72, has been a fixture in French left-wing politics for decades and held ministerial posts in past governments, when he was a member of the Socialist Party.
He ran for president in 2012, 2017 and 2022, improving his score each time. He came third in 2022, just behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Mr Macron won that election.
A fiery orator, Mr Melenchon is one of the most divisive figures in French politics, enthusing some voters while horrifying others with his unbridled tax-and-spend proposals, class war rhetoric and controversial foreign policy positions, especially on Gaza. Critics accuse him of anti-Semitism, which he denies.
Marine Tondelier, leader of the Greens
Ms Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Les Ecologistes (The Ecologists, or Greens) party delivering a speech after partial results in the parliamentary election on July 7.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Ms Tondelier, 37, grew up in Henin-Beaumont, a town in northern France that is well known as a bastion of the far-right National Rally (RN) and its leader, Ms Le Pen.
Ms Tondelier has a long record of opposing the RN.
She was elected as an opposition member of the town’s municipal council in 2014. She documented her experiences working under an RN mayor and what she described as the oppressive atmosphere generated by the far-right administration in a 2017 book titled News From The Front.
Ms Tondelier was also elected to a northern regional council in 2021, and she became leader of France’s best-known ecologist party, the Greens, the following year.
Raphael Glucksmann, Socialist Party
Mr Raphael Glucksmann, Member of the European Parliament and co-president of political movement Place Publique, visiting the first constituency of the Bouches du Rhone in Marseille on July 5.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mr Glucksmann, 44, headed the Socialist list of candidates in the European elections in early June. They obtained nearly 14 per cent of the vote, just behind Mr Macron’s Together group. This was considered a sign of revival for a party that governed France in past decades but had recently fallen into electoral oblivion.
Mr Glucksmann attended prestigious schools and had a career in journalism and broadcasting before branching out in a variety of directions, including being an adviser to then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
He advocates strong European support for Ukraine in its resistance against Russia’s invasion.
Laurent Berger, former CFDT trade union leader
Mr Laurent Berger (left), then secretary-general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour, and CGT labour union leader Philippe Martinez at a demonstration in Paris against the French government’s pension reform, on March 23, 2023.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mr Berger, 55, is a former head of one of France’s main trade unions, the moderate French Democratic Confederation of Labour, or CFDT. He has a track record of strong opposition to the RN.
He has said he does not want to be prime minister, but others on the left have put his name forward, saying he could be a unifying figure and a popular alternative to Mr Melenchon. REUTERS
