The Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) pick Lucie Castets is an economist and senior civil servant with a background in “fighting tax evasion and financial crime” as well as campaigning for public services, the alliance said in a statement.

Working for the Paris city hall, Castets is a total unknown to the wider public – after the announcement, one of her colleagues helpfully tweeted about how to pronounce her name.

Although the consensus appears to put an end to infighting in the fractious grouping of Socialists, Greens, Communists and hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI), hurdles remain before Castets can be installed at the head of a possible new left-wing government.

The NFP has 193 seats in the Assemblée nationale lower house following July 7th’s second-round poll, against 164 for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and 143 for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) and its allies.

But that is still well short of a majority in the 577-seat body, and any government needs to be able to survive a confidence vote in the chamber or risk immediate ejection.

The 37-year-old Castets told AFP she had accepted the nomination “with great humility but also great conviction”, believing herself a “serious and credible candidate” for PM.

Castets added that one of her top priorities would be to “repeal the pension reform” that Macron pushed through last year, triggering widespread protests and discontent, as well as a “major tax reform so everyone pays their fair share”.

It is President Macron himself who must nominate any new prime minister – and in a TV interview later on Tuesday he said that he would not name a new government until after the Paris Olympics are over.

Macron has left Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and his ministers in place in a caretaker capacity, that seems likely to remain in place at least until the Olympics end on August 11th.