President Emmanuel Macron faced an uphill battle Tuesday to launch fresh talks over a new government in France, with the political left refusing to take part after he rejected their candidate for prime minister.
More than seven weeks after an inconclusive parliamentary election which cost his allies their relative majority, Macron has still not named a new prime minister to take over from the current caretaker administration.
A left-wing coalition called New Popular Front (NFP) - which emerged as the largest bloc in the vote - has demanded that the president pick their candidate Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old economist who belongs to the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party.
But late Monday, Macron ruled out naming a left-wing government, saying it would be a "threat to institutional stability".
Instead, he called on "all political leaders to rise to the occasion by demonstrating a spirit of responsibility".
Macron's office said that it would be pointless to name an NFP government as it would immediately be rejected by a no-confidence vote in parliament.
The president called on the socialists, ecologists and communists in the leftist alliance to "cooperate with other political forces", in an apparent attempt to split the more moderate members of the coalition away from LFI.
But on Tuesday, Socialist party boss Oliver Faure refused Macron's invitation to new talks, saying he would "not be an accomplice to a parody of democracy".
Socialist deputies would back a no-confidence motion against any government that was not put forward by the NFP, he said, accusing the president of seeking to "prolong Macronism" despite losing the National Assembly election.
"French people will start to get annoyed, to say the least," Faure warned, saying he would take part in street protests, after Communist party leader Fabien Roussel - who also rejected new talks with Macron - called for a "grand popular mobilisation".
"The left is being robbed of this election," said Green Party chief Marine Tondelier.
"We won't be part of this mess anymore," she said.
Castets accused Macron of seeking to be "president, prime minister and party leader all at the same time", but she said this was "not respectful of French voters or of democracy".
The far-right National Rally (RN) has not been invited to Tuesday's talks.