The results of the second round of voting in France are in and, if anything, they’re perhaps more surprising than the first, when President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble party was battered from pillar to post and Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s National Rally (RN) looked on the cusp of a majority.

Not so. The RN did not win a thumping majority or even a minority. Thanks to deals made last week between Emsemble and the hard-left coalition New Popular Front (NFP) — led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) — to drop their respective candidates out of races they had little chance of winning, NFP took the most seats (182), followed by Ensemble at 168 and RN with 143.