Fresh faces on the far right and left fill France’s parliament

led her 89 freshly elected deputies through the gates of the National Assembly, she gave them an order: dress smartly, with jackets and ties for the men. Sure enough, the biggest group of deputies that her populist-nationalist party, the National Rally (), has ever taken into the chamber turned up as instructed. As parliament opened on June 28th, members of a movement that once struggled to shake off its thuggish image took their seats in a sober uniform of navy suits or unicolour jackets.Ms Le Pen’s ambition is not merely stylistic. A party once banished to the fringes of political life now finds itself the biggest single opposition party to President Emmanuel Macron. His centrist alliance, Ensemble, lost its majority in last month’s general election, and now faces a buoyant, if fragmented, opposition. As part of Ms Le Pen’s strategy of “normalisation”, she wants to show that her deputies can work efficiently in parliament and form an “elite” ready to take over in 2027. Whereas Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical-left deputies turned up to parliament clenching their fists and promising to cause trouble, Ms Le Pen said coolly that she does not want “to be in systematic obstruction”.