French election: Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron lock horns in TV debate – as it happened

Tonight’s debate is not going to go down as a classic. Previous TV encounters on the way to winning the French Presidency have delivered lines that have lived long in the memory: “You do not have a monopoly on heart” for example. This evening was a lot more of an unseemly squabble, and at times very ugly.

All the signs from the polls are that Macron will win at the weekend, but it looks like a sizeable chunk of Mélenchon supporters will not be helping him on his way. Could that make a difference and let Le Pen in?

We’ll find out on Sunday night. Join us then.

If you are puzzled by the attraction of Marine Le Pen to some French voters, it is worth spending ten minutes watching this video where our Paris bureau chief Angelique Chrisafis visits ‘forgotten France’

There’s a moment where she speaks to someone in rural France who is going to vote Le Pen, who says:

I even had an uncle who was detained in the concentration camps during the war. He did three camps - Dachau, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. With three numbers tattooed here. So I know how these kind of people are. But to put things right again - it’s the only solution.

In the UK, coinciding with the end of tonight’s debate, the former leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage, has written for the Telegraph saying that he endorses Marine Le Pen as the right candidate for “Brexit Britain”

In the piece he says of Le Pen that “There is nothing she has said in this entire election campaign that I find unreasonable or extreme.”

There will be people who think her stated views on the wartime roundup of Jews in Paris stretch that definition.

So what did Guardian commenters make of that fractious debate? Here’s a selection of the comments left in the concluding moments:

K19W12

03 May 2017 10:33pm

The France I know has manners. Mme Le Pen has none. That some French even contemplate voting for her goes beyond me. Well, it worked for Trump. The West has lost its civility; we will be as barbarous as the ones we claim to oppose.

Lentille

03 May 2017 10:33pm

LePen really nails my old playground routine whenever someone outshone me intellectually: trying to make fun of them relentlessly.

Problem is, we're supposed to be adults now and I'm not trying to become the president of France.

But it wasn’t like Macron didn’t fight back:

hopethathelps

03 May 2017 10:29pm

Macron calling Le Pen a 'parasite'.

Apparently, he's the dignified one.

And there’s still an issue of trust with what Macron might do if he gets into power:

James00000

03 May 2017 10:33pm

Can the French people trust a former investiment banker whom will struggle to resist the interests of those friendships forged during those years and years in office....

Maybe RogueEmu here identifies the ultimate conundrum for the French public. These candidates offer two very different visions of the France they want to lead, but neither of them could gather more than 25% of the vote in the first round

RogueEmu

03 May 2017 10:29pm

If a politician from the centre-ground had offered even vaguely economically-literate proposals on how best to extricate France from the Euro, i suspect neither Le Pen nor Melenchon would have made it anywhere near the second round. Instead, the increasingly cynical and Eurosceptic French electorate is being offered a choice between two weak candidates: one the leader of an extremist party, the other, through his support of the Euro, unable to promise anything other than 'more of the same'.