For a lot of the Right, however, the alliance represents the end of the “Mitterand trap”, referring to Left-wing former president François Mitterrand’s supposed preference for having the National Front (as the RN was called until 2018) as his opponents. This was demonstrated by Mitterand’s introduction of proportional representation in 1985, which allowed the National Front into parliament and forced the Right into permanent disunity as Gaullists refused to work with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party.

But how did this united front against the Le Pen clan collapse?

Marine Le Pen has long embarked on a strategy of “de-demonisation”, attempting to shake off the stigma of her father by softening the party’s image and changing its name. The appointment of Bardella has accelerated this process, as the TikTok-friendly 28-year-old has helped consolidate the party’s youth vote and alter the perceptions of voters who no longer regard the RN as a party of elderly racists. Following the success of 2017, when she made it into the second round of the presidential election on a welfarist and Eurosceptic platform on the advice of former National Front politician Florian Philippot, Le Pen has since prepared for government by toning down these stances, focusing instead on a more business-friendly line of some national protectionism.

On the other side of this equation, Ciotti represents the coming to terms of Les Républicains with their junior status. The moderates fled to Macron and couldn’t be won back by Valérie Pécresse in the 2022 election. The working-class parts of the centre-right base had long since departed to Le Pen, and some of the upper-middle-class hardline conservatives even bled out to Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête.

Ciotti’s positions on culture, immigration and security are separated from Bardella’s by a cigarette paper. Ciotti believes in the Great Replacement Theory, supports abolition of “right of soil” (meaning people born on French territory to non-French parents would not get automatic citizenship), has called for the addition of 100,000 more prison places, and was an opponent of gay marriage. Les Républicains’ lurch to the Right on cultural and social questions and the RN’s moderation on economic ones, combined with LR’s electoral failings and the prospect of a (relatively) united Left, have provided fertile soil for the Right-wing convergence we see today. Typhanie Degois, a former Macronist MP who recently defected to LR, described the unity as a project “to restore order in both the streets and the public accounts”.

This convergence is evident beyond the parties, as businesses are clamouring for access to Le Pen. Reportedly, parts of the influential Dassault family which owns Le Figaro are ready to take the plunge and support the RN.

For the moment, Zemmour remains out in the cold following the expulsion of Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal from his party for suggesting Reconquête shouldn’t field candidates against the RN. Bardella apparently does not want Zemmour with him, for fear of alienating wavering voters, but this may only prove temporary. A conversation I had with one of Reconquête’s remaining candidates suggested that their standing at all was essentially out of wounded pride and a desire not to lay down and die. She added that their dissidence extends only to the first round of voting. That is to say, there will likely be yet more convergence in the run-off races to come.