THEY looked like extras in a remake of Doctor Zhivago, but the people waving red flags and handing out leaflets about “class struggle” were not acting. They were attending a rally in support of one of France’s most popular politicians.

In some European countries, parties of the extreme left are clinging, at best, to the political rock face, but in France they are thriving: up on the podium two weeks ago was Arlette Laguiller, the “comrade candidate” who heads a secretive party called Workers’ Struggle.

Her millions of fans refer to her simply as Arlette and, quaint as it may sound, this 67-year-old former typist with cropped hair and an elfin smile is preaching the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a solution to France’s woes.

“The rich live from the exploitation of workers; they get all the benefits,” she said, adopting rhetoric not heard in most developed countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Laguiller may belong in a political museum, but the appeal of Leninism in the land of Louis Vuitton has grown in recent years as mainstream Socialists have been discredited by ineptitude, corruption and broken electoral promises.

She and those like her claim credit for France’s rejection of the proposed European Union constitution. And such is their combined electoral muscle that they could wreck the chances of Ségolène Royal, the Socialist party frontrunner, in the presidential race next year.

It would not be the first time a Socialist candidate has been torpedoed by the extreme left. Lionel Jospin lost so many votes to the “loony left” in 2002, when it became fashionable among the “intellos” to vote for the likes of Laguiller, that the extreme rightwinger Jean-Marie Le Pen went through to round two instead of the former Socialist prime minister.

The Socialists were forced to “hold their noses” and vote for President Jacques Chirac, who was re-elected. Could the French left be self-destructive enough to make the same mistake twice?

Some polls suggest that a smattering of far-left parties could score up to 20%, splitting the left-wing vote in favour of the far right.

Although hugely popular with the public, Royal is struggling to win the hearts and minds of party militants who are upset with what they suspect might be her “Blairite” agenda. She needs their support to win her party’s nomination to stand for president.

Already she has been pressed into ditching social conservatism in favour of gay adoption and marriage. But nothing she can do, short of announcing that capitalism is evil, will satisfy the heirs of Trotsky and Lenin. “She’s a supporter of big business,” said Henriette Mauthey, a spokeswoman for Workers’ Struggle. “We cannot submit to capitalist interests.”

The same is heard from Olivier Besancenot, 30, presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Communist League. “She is from the right of the Socialist party,” he said. “We have nothing in common.”

Few politicians have knocked on as many doors as Besancenot: for years he has been delivering the mail in Neuilly, an affluent suburb of Paris where they call him “the Red Postman”.

To anyone with time to chat, the postman will advocate a paradise of the proletariat at Europe’s heart. He also argues for the legalisation of cannabis.

The former, at least, seems to appeal to a proportion of French voters. Many fear that even a Socialist government will end up imposing on them an “Anglo-Saxon” economic model resulting in the loss of their social benefits.

Another reason for the appeal of Besancenot and his friends is France’s revolutionary heritage. Ever since it executed its royals, the country has often been more left-wing than other European nations; even its “conservative” leaders seem to the left of Britain’s new Labour.

Besancenot and Laguiller are expected to score 3-5% each and pollsters expect a similar tally for Marie-Georges Buffet, the Communist party leader, and for José Bové, the pipe-smoking anti-globalisation icon, sheep farmer and leader of a bloc called No. The name harks back to the “No” campaign he led with Besancenot, Laguiller and the Communists to block the EU constitution at a referendum last year.

Bové wants to revive that rejectionist team to fight the presidential election, with himself as the candidate. The postman seemed quite keen on the idea, suggesting the four leaders sit down and discuss it over some “nosh”. Laguiller, however, seemed reluctant to abandon her sixth — and, apparently, last — run for president.

Besides, she will not sit down with the Communists, regarding them as “traitors” for having previously entered coalitions with Socialists.

Four other left-wing parties, including the Greens, are expected to field presidential candidates. It could make for a hopelessly splintered left-wing vote; and François Hollande, the Socialist party secretary-general who is also Royal’s boyfriend and the father of her children, was already sounding dismayed.

“I respect all of these personalities,” he said last week. “I say to them, ‘You have the right to present yourselves [as candidates], but we [Socialists] have a duty to be in the second round of the election’.”

It promises to be a lively election battle.

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