Hello and we are in the French capital today because of the

news hour coming to you live from Paris with me James Kamarasami and we are in

the French capital today because of the results and surprising results they are of a

parliamentary election which in normal times does get relatively little attention that's

because France a permanent UN Security Council member Nuclear Power is a presidential

republic the president runs the foreign and defense policy and appoints a

Prime Minister to oversee domestic matters. These though are not normal

political times, Emmanuel Macron's decision to call parliamentary

elections three years early after his party was beaten and beaten sounded by the far-right

national rally in last month's European elections took even some of his

closest allies by surprise. It unleashed a set of pretty unpredictable forces.

Last Sunday's first round of the voting saw the national rally, the former National Front renamed and rebranded by

Maureen Le Penh come top again putting itself in a position to potentially get a

majority of seats in the National Assembly and former government.

That was a nightmare scenario for Emmanuel Macron, a leader who has been at the heart of shaping

the EU project.

It would have forced him into political cohabitation with the Nationalist Eurosceptic party against which he has always

defined himself. That prospect has also focused minds across France's splintered political spectrum in

hundreds of seats where no candidate won outright

last week. Deals were struck this week between candidates from the

President's Centrist Alliance and those from a new ad hoc left-wing group called

the New Popular Front. Shotgun marriages of

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