Over a photo of a pensive Emmanuel Macron, the headline on the front of one French tabloid this morning asks: ‘And now, we do what?’

Good question. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will tender his resignation to the president this morning, although it is by no means certain it will be accepted. Macron could ask him to stay in his post while a government is formed and the Olympics run their course. That may take time given that no party emerged from Sunday’s second round of voting as dominant.

In terms of seats won, no single party enjoyed a better night than the National Rally

The left-wing coalition of Socialists, Communists, Greens and far-left figures won the most seats in the 577-seat National Assembly. In a characteristically fiery speech on Sunday evening, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the left’s most charismatic and influential politician, made it clear he expects his la France Insoumise party to be part of the government.

Melenchon dreams of becoming prime minister but Macron, who ultimately makes the decision, won’t grant him that wish. Instead he will settle upon a centrist, someone who won’t rock the boat. Among the names being mentioned are Marine Tondelier, the leader of the Green party, or Raphaël Glucksmann, who led the Socialist party in their recent European election campaign.

That was the event that led to this month of extraordinary drama in France. Macron dissolved parliament on 9 June on learning that the National Rally had triumphed in the European elections, polling 31 per cent, more than twice that of their nearest rival.

Macron said the purpose of the parliamentary elections was ‘clarification’, and that’s what he got after the first round last week when the National Rally came out again on top. In fact, the party also won the popular vote in Sunday’s second round with 37 per cent (10.1 million votes in total), 12 per cent superior to Melenchon’s New Popular Front coalition.

In terms of seats won, no single party enjoyed a better night than the National Rally; they are forecast to end up with around 120, which would be an increase of 32 on the number they had before this election. Macron’s Renaissance party is projected to have 100 seats, 145 fewer than they won in the 2022 election.

But these figures are all irrelevant because the left, the centre and the centre-right connived last week to keep the National Rally on the sidelines. Through tactical voting, the National Rally’s opponents ensured that they won far fewer seats than they had initially been forecast in the aftermath of the first round. So much for that absolute majority.

Few connived as much as Edouard Philippe, Macron’s first PM between 2017 and 2020. Since then he has been the centre-right mayor of Le Havre, but he voted for the communist candidate in the second round in order to block the National Rally. It was done, he explained, out of ‘democratic requirements’. How voting for such an ideology responsible for the deaths of 100 million people around the world is a boost for democracy was a question Philippe never answered; but it worked and Le Havre now has a communist MP.

On Sunday night, Philippe called on the ‘centre’ to build a coalition that excluded the National Rally and also Melenchon’s la France Insoumise. He was ready to contribute, he added, but ‘we will have to listen to the country’.

There was a similar message from Gabriel Attal when he announced he was ready to resign. ‘I respect each and every one of you,’ he told the nation, overlooking the fact he had last week labelled National Rally voters a ‘danger’. ‘Because there are not several categories of French people, those who would be right and those who would be wrong, those who would vote well and those who would vote badly.’ Attal also intimated he would run for president in 2027, declaring that ‘we will have to invent something new, something great, something useful.’

That something is likely to be a continuation of Macron’s ‘extreme centrism’. It is unlikely to be either great or useful, but it will ensure that France remains a bitterly divided and barely governable country, torn between the extremes of the left, the right and the centre.