This summer, the French left was on the up. For the second time in two years, its often-fractious parties formed an electoral alliance, this time named the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP). It outperformed expectations in snap parliamentary elections, winning more seats than any other force in the July 7 runoffs. It didn’t win an outright majority — but deprived Emmanuel Macron the stability he claimed to crave, while denying Marine Le Pen her widely anticipated victory.

France briefly seemed like it offered an example: if you can unite the broad left and center left behind a radical program, you can beat back the far right. Still, an alliance running all the way from ex-Macronist minister Aurélien Rousseau to Philippe Poutou of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste papered over many cracks. Now, they are coming out into the open.

Already when the French left sealed a previous alliance (New Ecological and Social Popular Union, or NUPES) for the 2022 contest, several senators on the right wing of the Parti Socialiste (PS) agonized about party leader Olivier Faure’s decision to join. They bemoaned the party’s “submission” to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise and worried that they — self-styled “reformists” of the center left (whose reforms occur squarely within the framework of neoliberalism) — would be forced into alignment with Mélenchon’s supposedly revolutionary agenda.