Can left overcome its bitter rivalries to defy the far right?

The 'New Popular Front' of Socialists, Greens and Communists could be the best hope of keeping out Marine Le Pen's National Rally

- Kim Willsher

The posters strung across the street in Montreuil, east of Paris, were still fluttering in the breeze days after the stage, the microphones and the politicians at the launch of France's newest political force had gone.

Here, out of the smouldering ashes of the country's bickering left, a coalition had risen to take on the far right.

The Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front; NFP) is a tetchy alliance of Socialists (PS), Greens (EELV), Communists (PCF), hard left Insoumises (Unbowed; LFI), and other red-banner candidates that polls suggest is the country's best - if not only -hope of staving off a Rassemblement National (National Rally; RN) majority government in the final round of legislative voting.

For France's Socialists, allying with LFI after its outspoken leader JeanLuc Mélenchon's insults and attacks on the man who led their European campaign, Raphaël Glucksmann, has been a bitter pill to swallow. But swallow it they must, Glucksmann said, if they are to win what he calls "the mother of all battles".

"It's complicated ... I'm not going to tell you it's a marriage of love," he said of the left's new coalition.

The coalition has agreed to divvy up constituencies to ensure no leftwing candidate stands in opposition to another. But its launch in Montreuil last Monday evening was tense.