Key NFP Member Lambasts Other Alliance Parties Over PM Nomination Battle

Marine Tondelier, leader of the left-wing environmentalist Les Écologistes (The Ecologists, LE), has this morning strongly criticised fellow parties within the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) alliance amid an inability to agree on a candidate to put forward for prime minister.

• With more than two weeks passing since the second round of the legislative election that delivered a plurality of seats in the National Assembly for the NFP, internal divisions among the broad group have meant that no single individual has managed to gain the backing of all major parties.
• Tondelier said she was "disgusted" and that "there is no longer a negotiating table" in the NFP to reach a compromise candidate due to a "leadership war" between the two largest parties in the NFP; the left-wing La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI) and the centre-left Socialist Party (PS).
• Macron is not obliged by the constitution to appoint a PM from the largest grouping in the National Assembly, but it would be politically difficult for him to deny the NFP the first opportunity to form a gov't if it can agree on a candidate.
• The Assembly convenes for the first time since the election on Thursday 18 July. It is at this point that political groups will be formalised. Given the internal divisions, there is the prospect of deputies shifting their allegiances from the parties they were initially elected for (five have already left LFI to form L'Apres).