In less than a year’s time, France will head to the polls to elect a new president. Two of the dominant figures in French politics over the past decade will not be on the ballot. President Emmanuel Macron is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, while Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National (RN; formerly Front National), has been barred from running following her embezzlement conviction. In her place, the RN’s thirty-year-old Party resident, Jordan Bardella, is leading polling in both the first and second rounds.

The French left, however, remains divided. The relative success of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) — an electoral alliance bringing together much of the Left, in 2024, which emerged as the largest bloc in the National Assembly — has given way to growing tensions between its constituent parties, most notably Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise (LFI) and the Parti Socialiste (PS).

In an interview, Thomas Glasman met with Danièle Obono, a France Insoumise parliamentarian for Paris and one of the party’s most prominent anti-racist and internationalist voices, who has served in the National Assembly since 2017. They discussed the fragmentation of the French left, the rise of racialized politics, and how to confront an increasingly powerful far right.