But Ms Le Pen said her party would oppose a Leftist government, with or without the LFI, whom she described as the group’s puppetmaster.
“It doesn’t change a thing,” she said on Monday. “The New Popular Front is led by France Unbowed, and the most brutal, the most violent, the most excessive, the most outrageous, is the one who imposes the law … it’s France Unbowed, it’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon who’s really in charge of this party.”
In a letter sent to members of Mr Macron’s Ensemble grouping after the president’s meeting with the RN, outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal also criticised Mr Mélenchon’s proposal for an NFP government without France Unbowed, calling it an “attempted coup de force” masquerading as a “sham of openness”.
“What Jean-Luc Mélenchon is proposing is to remove a name from the store front, but change nothing inside. We cannot accept this,” Mr Attal wrote. “A motion of censure would therefore be inevitable, and it would be the direct responsibility of a camp that considers it can govern alone, and does not wish to compromise.”
He then called for a meeting with presidents of parliamentary parties, without France Unbowed and RN.
Mr Mélenchon responded by turning the accusation round on Mr Attal.
“Attal accuses me of a ‘coup de force.’ But I’m not fooled. I’m just a pretext for another operation,” he tweeted. “… In short: Attal pushes Macron out the door. If ever there was a coup de force, this is it.”