The many crises afflicting Emmanuel Macron’s presidency point to deep turmoil in France’s institutions. In many accounts, the likely beneficiary is Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National, which is today polling strongly. Yet, time and again, the country’s Left has shown that it cannot be discounted. Only last summer, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance defied expectations to come first in the parliamentary elections.

Decisive to that success — and to the radicalism of the NFP’s program — was radical-left force France Insoumise. Its presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was by far the most popular left-wing candidate in the last two election cycles, and it has established a much more enduring presence in protest movements and in institutions than other European radical-left forces.

In an interview, France Insoumise MP Clémence Guetté and the Institut La Boétie’s Antoine Salles-Papou explained the movement’s strategy, its basis in popular mobilization, and the possibility of an overhaul of the Fifth Republic’s institutions. This interview originally appeared in Italian, in Teiko.