He’s the main contender on the limited field of the actual left in France. He’s got a lot of proposals that are actually good and desirable.
He’s also a narcissist and a populist whose stated approach to achieving his proposals is to denounce treaties he doesn’t like and somehow force other countries to replace clauses with whatever it is he wants.
He’s also incapable of compromises, and right now busily torpedoeing the left wing alliance that won the election because his own party didn’t win enough seats to take charge of the alliance.
What I don’t know is, how much of the populist/anti-system talk is just talk for political reasons, and whether he would in fact be capable of the nuance required to govern. He might. He might not. He’s clearly smart and charismatic. But he’s also the type to huff his own farts hard enough to mistake the visions for the truth of the world. So… In that respect, pretty much just like Macron.
France has a big, big problem with overemphasizing individual politicians over policies.
I know right? Some countries are much better about it though. In Ireland, Varadkar and Martin recently shared the Taoiseach (prime minister) role when neither of their parties won enough seats to form a government. There wasn’t much fuss about it; it was just a reasonable compromise, so they went and did it.
From what I got by quickly screening his Wikipedia article he is a populist French politician on the left with a couple of views one view so bonkers most of us on the left don’t want to have people like him on the left.
Great, we have a couple of those in Germany too. Have fun with that maniac.
You know what? I made a mistake. I saw his position on the Russian annexation of Crimea (which is bonkers) and his stance of France leaving NATO (which is straight up stupid) and I didn’t give the rest of the article enough attention. The overwhelming majority of what he stands for is actually pretty neat.
Edit: Again. I have no idea about French politics so don’t quote me on this.
He’s a left French politician, several times candidate for presidency but never won.
He is seen as Fidel Castro boot licker by boomers (he is not), extreme left by right and extreme right (he is not).
He is a great talker but also a bit of an angry man which makes him unlikable to others.
Now is party is named “La France insoumise” (LFI) and they usually have very good political agendas, like at the last presidential it was something along the lines:
create the 6th republic based on true direct democracy
constitution is written by the French population for the French population
give back power to the population
once done, quit unless asked to stay president.
But because of his image among boomers and the right propaganda against him, he never won and his party suffer from his image.
The best thing would be to have his and LFI ideas without him. They need to find another leader for their image as Mélanchon is a liability for the left to access power.
If it’s the 6th Republic and new constitution stuff that make you think of populism, it’s not really the case. The current French constitution was more or less imposed by De Gaulle in very specific circumstances (the political crisis caused by the Algerian independance war). A number of people (among which Mélenchon) think it gives way too much power to the president and that we should go back to a more parliamentary system.