President Emmanuel Macron is facing more political chaos after Marine Le Pen said her party would never agree to a left-wing government taking power in France.
Eight weeks after snap parliamentary elections, France is still without a functioning government, despite Macron’s best efforts to broker a deal.
On Friday the beleaguered French President held talks with the left-wing bloc the New Popular Front (NFP), which won the most seats in the July elections.
The bloc is made up of an alliance between the Greens, Socialists, Communists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical Left party France Unbowed (LFI).
Initially, it appeared that momentum was building towards nominating Lucie Castets as the new French Prime Minister.
Castets is a French civil servant and economist, associated with the Socialist Party.
The controversial left-wing radical Mélenchon even suggested he was prepared to withdraw from the coalition to facilitate the appointment of Castets.
However, Macron has since decided against appointing the socialist economist to head up a new government.
On Monday, he held talks with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from France’s National Rally party (RN) in an attempt to break the impasse.
They both categorically ruled out supporting any left-wing government, as talks failed to achieve any breakthrough.
“The New Popular Front, with its program, movements and the personalities who embody it, today represents a danger to public order, to civil peace and, of course, to the country’s economic life,” Bardella, the president of the RN, said.
“Not only do we want our voters to be heard and respected, we also want to protect the country from a government that is fracturing French society.”
Meanwhile, Le Pen said her party would oppose any left-wing government with or without Mélenchon’s LFI party.
“It doesn’t change a thing,” she said on Monday after her meeting with President Macron.
“The New Popular Front is led by France Unbowed, and the most brutal, the most violent, the most excessive, the most outrageous, is the one who imposes the law,” she said.
“It’s France Unbowed, it’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon who’s really in charge of this party.”
Under France’s political system, the president appoints a prime minister who can command a majority in the National Assembly.
In recent years, that prime minister has come from the same party as the president, as they are elected within a few weeks of each other.
But after Macron stunned France in June by calling a snap two-round parliamentary vote, his centrist Ensemble alliance came runner-up behind the NFP.
