‘Mother of all battles’: French left join forces to beat far-right electoral threat

The Socialists, Greens and Communists have put aside their differences to form a New Popular Front'

The posters strung across the street in Montreuil, east of Paris, were still fluttering in the breeze days after the stage, the microphones and the politicians at the launch of France's newest political force had gone.

Here, out of the smouldering ashes of the country's bickering left, a coalition had risen to take on the far right.