He has called for a top rate of income tax of 90 per cent, wants France to leave Nato and has chatted with Jeremy Corbyn in Spanish about their shared admiration of Latin American revolutionaries.
With just four weeks to go until the presidential election, the veteran leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 70, is enjoying a surge in the polls that has raised the prospect that he, rather than one of his far-right rivals, may yet face Emmanuel Macron in the run-off to enter the Elysée Palace.
“The fact I could reach the second round changes the discourse,” he said last week, claiming the debate was shifting towards the rising cost of living and away from issues such as immigration. “It’s a more classic left-right debate, instead
