In late summer 2023, the Parti Socialiste MP Laurent Baumel was sitting with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, shocked. The two men were drinking tea in a tent at Amfis, the annual festival of ideas hosted by Mélenchon’s radical-left France Insoumise (LFI) movement. In the previous year’s presidential election, Mélenchon had scored 22 percent, almost making the second […]