The leader of the French Socialist party has put himself forward to be the country’s next prime minister in a pitch focusing on his moderate credentials.
Olivier Faure said he was “willing to accept the job” after “dialogue” with the other members of the Left-wing coalition that won the most seats in elections on Sunday.
The New Popular Front (NPF) is made up of the hard-Left France Unbowed, Greens and Communists, as well Mr Faure’s Socialists.
The group won 193 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly, short of the 289 needed to win an absolute majority.
Pierre Jouvet, the Socialists’ secretary general, on Tuesday said that “Faure alone has the profile to reassure and be prime minister”, in what was described by analysts as an appeal to Mr Mélenchon to greenlight his candidacy.
Mr Faure, who took over as leader of the Socialists in 2018, angered some party members by joining Mr Mélenchon’s NPF coalition in 2022. Bernard Cazeneuve, a former prime minister, resigned entirely.
Last year, Mr Faure threatened to pull his party out of the NPF over Mr Mélenchon’s refusal to condemn Hamas over the Oct 7 massacre.
But by sticking the course, Mr Faure’s gambit – that the coalition could defeat Mr Macron’s centrist bloc and the Hard-Right National Rally (RN), in a way his shrinking party could not manage alone – appears to have paid off.
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