After a weekend wrapped in the glory of presiding over the reopening of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral, French President Emmanuel Macron has returned to earth with a bump – summoned by his own camp to name a prime minister "within hours" to end the current political turmoil.
The desperate hunt for a new prime minister to replace Michel Barnier continues on Monday.
Macron will receive representatives of the Liot independent group, Communists and Ecologists.
The hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party has refused to take part and the far-right National Rally has not been invited.
The President is looking for elusive allies to ensure a working majority in parliament after his pick, Michel Barnier, lost a no confidence vote last week, just three months into office.
Macron's own camp piled on the pressure on Sunday when the President of the lower house, Yael Braun-Pivet, asked him to appoint a new prime minister "in the next few hours".
François Bayrou of the centre-right MoDem party, and one of the few names circulating to take over from Barnier, said he was ready to help.
"We can't go on like this. If I can help us get out of all this, I'll do it," the former minister and mayor of the southern French town of Pau told his local radio.
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Reaching out to the Socialists
France's new premier will need the support of at least 289 of the Assembly's 577 MPs if he or she is able to govern and get legislation passed without recourse to the constitutional tool that Barnier was forced to use to pass the 2025 budget, and which led to his demise.
Braun-Pivet, a member of Macron's Renaissance party, is campaigning to form an enlarged central bloc ranging from the rightwing Republicans (LR) to the Socialists (PS).
"If you add up our common base, Liot and the PS, you have 299 MPs," she said in an interview on Sunday. "You'll have a majority, so there's no longer any possibility of censure."
The head of the PS met Macron last Friday to discuss "reciprocal concessions".
Braun-Pivet called for "a joint action programme" between those political groups, focusing on healthcare, agriculture, simplification, decentralisation and possibly proportional representation.
Far right excluded
The far-right National Rally, which along with LFI voted to bring down the Barnier government, has not to been invited to Monday's talks.
Party leader Jordan Bardella is nonetheless knocking on the Elysée door.
"You can't pretend we're not here," he warned in an interview with France 3 television, adding that reaching out to the left was designed to "prevent millions of people who voted for the RN from seeing their ideas expressed".
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Divided left
Meanwhile the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition that came out on top in the snap parliamentary elections in June is increasingly divided.
The Socialists, Ecologists and Communists are calling, to varying degrees, for discussion, while the hard-left LFI refuses to "betray its voters" by taking part in a Macron government.
"If the Socialists join the future government, the NFP will continue without them," said LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. "We refuse to govern with this right-wing bloc."
LFI lawmaker Eric Coquerel, chairman of the assembly's Finance Committee, said he believed Macron was "fooling everyone" and wouldn't appoint a left-wing prime minister."
The president's strategy was aimed solely at "dividing" the NFP, Coquerel said.
"There can be no compromise," fellow LFI MP Mathilde Panot told Franceinfo.
Meanwhile the right-wing Republicans have their own red lines: "No LFI in government, no NFP programme," Laurent Wauquiez, leader of the LR party in the Assembly, told Le Figaro.
