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Guardian staff I think there's clearly a lot of truth in that.
Le Pen has tried to distance herself from the party as far as she can during this campaign, to the extent of not using its name or branding at all. But polls show a majority of French people still think the Front National is a "danger for the republic" – despite all her detoxification efforts, that's what she still has to crack.
Where does each stand on taxes? Income tax, but also other taxes, like corporation tax, inheritance, ...
Guardian staff There's a comprehensive overview of the five leading candidates in the first round – so including Le Pen and Macron – here.
question:
how could a Macron presidency influence the german elections?
he and Schulz would be a dream-team for stronger european integration.
Guardian staff Macron's possible influence on Germany is interesting. If he can push through his planned economic reforms and get the French economy working better, he might be able to persuade Germany to rebalance its economy (boosting investment, borrowing, imports, consumption) which would really help the weaker eurozone members.
At present that's pretty much abhorrent to German voters, though, and although Schulz is more open to the idea he would have trouble convincing German voters. The real value for Europe in a Macron presidency would be if a functioning France could help get the famed Franco-German motor back in gear.
Can either of these upstarts actually govern, given that neither seem to have a hope in hell of winning a majority in the legislative elections?
Angelique Chrisafis replies:
This is the key question. Macron has insisted throughout the campaign that if he is elected, his new “neither right nor left” political movement En Marche! (On the Move), which is just one year old, will be able to gain a majority in parliament elections in June. He said he would field candidates for all of parliament’s 577 seats. He has stipulated that half the candidates for En Marche! must be women and half will be newcomers to politics, fighting their first campaign. Those that jump ship from other parties on the left or right will have to dump their old party’s ticket and run as En Marche!
The rightwing Les Républicains, who saw their presidential candidate François Fillon defeated, want to use the parliamentary elections to take revenge by gaining seats, but their party is divided. If Macron does not win a majority in parliament he could try to cobble one together from a new type of coalition of MPs willing to help him, but this would be difficult.
Last month, Macron revealed the names of 14 of his new MP candidates, including the former head of the RAID elite police squad who led the charge against Islamist hostage-takers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2015, a farmer, a school headmistress, a HR director, a hospital manager, a sociologist and several entrepreneurs.
Le Pen would also have a problem gaining a majority. She currently has two MPs in a parliament that totals 577 seats. Her party hopes to win at least enough to form a parliamentary grouping in June, which requires 15 MPs.
Angelique Chrisafis replies:
Not enough to introduce laws and implement proposed reforms unless he or she wins a majority in parliament in the legislative elections on June 11th and 18th.
Although a French president has certain major powers such as the ability to appoint a prime minister, authorise a referendum, dissolve the National Assembly and take full power under emergency circumstances, they depend on a like-minded prime minister and parliamentary majority to propose and pass laws. Without a majority, the president risks being reduced to a mere figurehead. The parliamentary elections in June are crucial.
Macron really does seem to be in the typical left wing mould of 'planning yet again to run out of other people's money' and with little that can see real reform coming to France. At least Le Pen would get the country back off its knees - and kick start real reform of the EU. Do you agree?
Guardian staff I don't think you have read his programme. He is not a "typical left-winger" and the bulk of his economic proposals have been endorsed by plenty of French economists.
Very few economists, on the other hand, believe Le Pen's economic programme is likely to "get the country back off its knees".
Don't you think that Emmanuel Macron accepting a debate with Marine Le Pen (as opposed to Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002) normalises far-right extremism?
Guardian staff Personally, I think it would be very dangerous to deny a public platform – and hence a television debate – to a party that has consistently won the support of up to a quarter or more of French voters.
I was reporting for the Guardian in France for ten years until 2006, and I think there is probably merit in the argument that the media's refusal to give the party a fair hearing (and Jacques Chirac's refusal to debate Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002) only served to strengthen its supporters' sense of grievance.
A strong democracy needs to allow these views to be debated - as they were on Wednesday.
I'd be interested to hear about the famous "primaires" elections. Why did we got that in France, we never had that before - as if we had to copy all things American.
Perhaps a bit useless since none of the two "primaires" candidates made it to the second round.
Angelique Chrisafis replies:
The point of open primary elections to designate a party’s presidential candidate has been a focus of debate here.
The French left began a tradition around 20 years ago of allowing internal party members to vote to choose a candidate. But in 2011, the Socialists opened this out to allow anyone on the electoral register to have a say, whether a party member or not. That year François Hollande was chosen from five candidates — in what was seen as a public relations success with almost three million people voting in the final round.
Last autumn, France’s right-wing Les Républicains party and its small centre-right allies decided to copy the format. It was a new step for the right and came about partly to quash bitter in-fighting that had plagued the party since Nicolas Sarkozy’s election defeat in 2012. Anyone on the electoral register who paid two euros and said they adhered to the centre-right’s values could take part.
For almost a year, the former prime minister Alain Juppé was seen as a hands-down winner who would sail through the primary and then become the new president. His crushing defeat by the darkhorse candidate François Fillon in November, was a sign that voters were furious at being presented with foregone conclusions and wanted a shake-up. Fillon had run a shrewd campaign in which he targeted hardline rightwing, socially conservative voters who were more likely to turn out in a primary – but it did not necessarily represent the French electorate as a whole.
Likewise, the Socialist primary race in January was a major upset for the status-quo. The president François Hollande soon realised he was too unpopular to run again for office, the prime minister Manuel Valls stepped in but was squarely beaten by the left-wing rebel outsider Benoît Hamon. The Green party primary saw its former leader and government minsiter Cécile Duflot knocked out – part of a trend for punishing any figure seen as representing the system.
All primaries were bruising, bitter displays of rivalry that in the end served to fatally divide each party and designate candidates that — though in step with a small section of the parties’ voters — did not necessarily fit what the broader electorate wanted. Both candidates for the mainstream right and left were then knocked out of the presidential election. Some grumbled that open primaries did more harm than good.
The question now is not so much if open primaries will happen again in future. The question is whether France’s traditional right and left parties of government, rejected by voters in the presidential election, will now split and reinvent themlselves.
It’s worth pointing out that there was no primary race in the far-right Front National – a party run from the top-down by its leader, Marine Le Pen, with little open decision-making.
Macron has won...
Mountain to climb for Le Pen.
Interesting point - Macron said it can't be business as usual with the EU.
I'd say Le Pen will win after Macron has a few more disastrous years with the Euro, Schengan and Terrorism.
Guardian staff It's true that the polls look quite convincing for Macron, who has consistently held a lead of around 20 points over Le Pen for the past fortnight.
And French pollsters were astonishingly accurate in the first round on 23 April – with the four leading candidates all within five or six points of each other, the polls got each one's score right to within less than a percentage point. I did a piece looking at why that is here.
The big unknown question, though the pollsters say that have accounted for it, is abstention, which could well prove very significant in the final result. The slightly alarming stat some have been citing is that if 95% of Le Pen voters show up and only 65% of Macron's, that would be enough for her.
So I think best to take nothing for granted until 8pm (French time) on Sunday.
Given that the Guardian has been throwing around the terms "fascist" and "fascism" with gay abandon in recent weeks, it would be great if one of its journalists could come on here and post an example of a fascist measure in the FN's programme. Presuming someone there has read it.
Guardian staff Has it? I don't think any of the journalists covering the French election have used that term. Personally I tend to use terms like far right, populist, nativist, nation-first, anti-immigration, anti-EU, protectionist.
That said, French courts have ruled on more than one occasion that it is okay to call Le Pen and her party "fascist": see here and also here.
Updated
Wildefish asks about the future of the Front National if it is defeated on Sunday.
What will a Macron victory have on the future prospects of Le Pen and her party? Even if he wins this weekend doesn't it postpone this battle with FN ideas to the next election?
Angelique Chrisafis replies:
Many politicians on the right and left made it their electoral strategy to warn that this French presidential election was the “last chance” to stop the French far-right, saying the Front National was steadily growing at each local election and would one day take power. Political scientists warn against approaching elections featuring the far-right in Europe with a frenzy of “they’re going to win!” followed by “phew they’ve lost, it’s all over for them”.
The Front National’s pattern in recent years has been slow, steady electoral gains. Since Marine Le Pen took over from her father in 2011, the party has built up a grassroots presence, increased membership and made gains in every local, European and regional election. In the parliament elections next month, the party is expected to increase its seats from two MPs to perhaps enough to form a parliamentary group (which requires at least 15 MPs).
If Macron wins the presidency, Le Pen wants to establish herself as an opposition force that can weigh on public debate – the party has already seen its hardline ideas on national identity, immigration and security appropriated by mainstream parties on the right and even the left.
It’s impossible to predict how the Front National would fare from now until the next presidential elections in 2022 and how it would be placed in five years’ time. But the issues that the party has sought to focus on – the terrorist threat, the refugee crisis, unemployment, deindustrialisation, voters who struggle to make ends meet — are unlikely to disappear in the coming years.
A Macron presidency would not only be confronted with opposition from the far-right – the first-round of the presidential race also saw a strong hard-left showing opposed to his pro-business, free-market approach to the economy.
The far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen and the independent pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron go head-to-head in the final round of the presidential election this Sunday.
Macron, the favourite to secure the presidency, topped the first-round with 23.75% of votes, ahead of Le Pen’s 21.53%. As the campaign enters its final days, the candidates will be hoping to pick up voters who backed the conservative François Fillon and the hard left Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round.
Our Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis, and our European affairs editor, Jon Henley, will answer your questions on the presidential election from 12.00pm BST on Friday 5 May.
Post your questions in the comments below, and they’ll answer as many as possible.
Updated
A very simple remark:
If you really had a collective epiphany, becoming suddenly great democrats after years of membership to an overtly antisemite and racist party, would you retain the name of this party or would you change it?
Do the German have a reformed democratic party called the Nazi party? Really the Front National is proud of its name and history, which only indicates that Marine Le Pen and her friends are just wolves in sheep's clothing. Do the French have a memory loss, are stupid or, worse, nostalgic of the Vichy regime?
Marine Le Pen last minute stand down as leader of the FN is, maybe, caused by the realisation that the majority of the French people are not that stupid or extreme, and that "her brand" is toxic. I have not doubt that the my compatriots will see this gimmick for what it is: smoke and mirrors.