Wanted: politician capable of appealing to the moderate right, centre and moderate left to beat hard-right populist Jordan Bardella in the run-off of France’s 2027 presidential election. The search began in earnest after last month’s municipal elections, in which the left held on to most big cities while conservatives or the far-right National Rally (RN) hoovered up smaller towns. This year will be a marathon race to select a single candidate to face Bardella, 30, or his patron, Marine Le Pen, 57, in the final round. Le Pen remains ineligible unless an appeals court in July overturns her sentence for embezzlement of EU funds.

All opinion polls give the anti-immigration, Eurosceptic RN a sizeable lead in voting intentions for the first round. Bardella, the party’s smooth-talking but inexperienced leader, is polling as high as 38%. Barring a miracle, he seems sure of a place in the run-off. That leaves only one slot for a candidate who can reconcile mainstream conservative and liberal centrist supporters of outgoing President Emmanuel Macron, and then win over sufficient socialist, green and even radical-left voters.

The next year will be a battle to decide whose name will be on the ballot paper. The left is hopelessly divided between radical France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and other centre-left groups from the socialists to the greens and communists. The chances of them uniting behind a single progressive candidate are close to zero.

Mélenchon, 74, dug deeper trenches during the municipal campaign, being accused of “intolerable antisemitism” by leading figures in the Socialist party, and refusing to dissociate himself from a militant group implicated in the videoed kicking to death of a young far-right activist.........

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