My days of not taking Farage seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

… and the Tories still had their worst ever result.

Magnificent!

There are 159 for Ensemble and they need a total of 289 for a majority - that would mean finding 130 seats between the Socialists and Ecologists (I don’t know what proportion of the 180 NPF’s seats they account for), the 39 Republicans, 27 who Wikipedia classes as ‘miscellaneous right’, 12 ‘miscellaneous left’ and 6 ‘miscellaneous centre’.

No idea how - if at all - achievable that is!

We’re getting our country back 😍

Macron tried his best to torpedo the left and has been spending the entire election cycle shouting that the left wing coalition is as bad as the far right.

I thought Macron had more been drawing comparisons between the far-left - Melenchon / France Unbowed - and the far-right. Renaissance stood down many 3rd placed candidates in the second round when they were up against more moderate left parties like the Socialists, but drew a distinction when it came to France Unbowed.

Melenchon has a track record of saying some pretty questionable things with reference to Jewish people - denying French involvement in the Holocaust, claiming that the Jewish faith is at odds with assimilation into French culture, promoting the old antisemitic trope of Jewish guilt for the killing of Christ, and more. He also shares with Le Pen a deep hostility to the EU and NATO. In 2014, he spoke out in favour of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and he has blamed NATO for Russia’s more recent invasion of Ukraine. Individually you might come up with reasons to excuse him for some of this, but collectively it seems hard to argue that he’s not just a very unsavoury individual whose values and beliefs are very much at odds with inclusive 21st century internationalism.

England through, Tories out, what a week!

Test comment, please ignore.