The Rise of Marine Tondelier

When Marine Tondelier, the leader of the Greens, is told that she is sometimes called “the other Marine” of French politics, she hits back firmly. “No!” she says. “Le Pen is the other Marine.”

Given how rapidly Ms. Tondelier’s star has risen in recent months, her response is not outrageous. The French left has produced a new star in this garrulous, straight-talking ecologist who seems suddenly to appear on every TV and radio show and whose meadow-green jacket has become so iconic it has its own account on X.

Marine Tondelier, 37, who was born in Hénin-Beaumont, a depressed northern town in the constituency of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, was the driving force behind the creation of the New Popular Front, herding disparate parties into a left-wing alliance that won a surprise victory in parliamentary elections this month.

Less than two weeks later, the profoundly intractable new National Assembly of three large political blocs — left, center and nationalist right — gathers for the first time on Thursday. As it does, one question looms over a left-wing alliance that seems more fractured by the day: What to do with its about 190 seats in the 577-seat lower house when that is far short of an absolute majority?

President Emmanuel Macron has complicated that question further by making clear he has no intention of naming a left-wing prime minister. On Tuesday, he accepted the resignation of the centrist government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, but asked it to stay on in a caretaker capacity “for a certain period,” estimated at several weeks by some departing ministers, even into September.

That said, Mr. Macron demonstrated with the way he called a snap election that his political moves are entirely unpredictable.