A pessimist might have concluded that the lights were going out in Europe, with the far right ascendant in France, Germany and beyond.

On Sunday, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally was supposed to cement this narrative by winning the most seats in the second round of the French legislative elections. But it was not to be. The leftwing New Popular Front – an alliance whose largest cohort, La France Insoumise, is led by the unapologetically radical Jean-Luc Mélenchon – came top instead, surprising observers and delighting the country’s antifascist left.

No countries are identical, but France could offer a portal into Britain’s future, with both grim challenges and potential opportunities. See it like this: it was as if a left alliance including the French equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn, ranging from the Green party to Ed Miliband-type Labourites, saw off Nigel Farage. Its programme: an unashamedly social democratic formula of taxing the rich, public investment, reversing attacks on pensions and raising public sector wages. And in this scenario, of course, Keir Starmer is the “centrist” President Emmanuel Macron.

When Macron first secured the presidency in 2017, he was widely hailed as the antidote to “populism”, a term that has often been stretched to conflate anti-democratic, far-right extremism with the left.........

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