Tonight Jacobin will host an event at The World Transformed featuring France’s most popular political leader, France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Winning seven million votes in last year’s presidential election, the radical left-winger is today at the forefront of the revolt against Emmanuel Macron’s crisis-wracked government.

Mélenchon’s major breakthrough came in the 2017 contest, when he was under two points shy of beating Marine Le Pen into the second round. Even as the Socialist and Communist parties have waned, France Insoumise has eaten into the far right’s commanding position among the young and unemployed in small towns around France.

Mélenchon should, then, be more than welcome at Momentum and Labour events. Yet some don’t seem so sure. Last month Stephen Bush tweeted that the invitation showed “how little attention UK politicos pay to the continent” and suggested Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon (who scored 6 percent in 2017, against almost 20 percent for Mélenchon) as more relevant.