French election debate: Emmanuel Macron ready for ‘hand-to-hand combat’ with Marine Le Pen

The debate marks the candidates’ final encounter before Sunday’s vote to elect the next president. 

Opinion polls indicate Mr Macron, 39, holds a strong 20 point lead over Front National leader Marine Le Pen with just four days to go until the run-off. 

More than 20 million people are expected to watch the debate, in what is widely seen as France’s most important election in decades. 

With Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen caught in sharp exchanges in recent days, the former economy minister warned he will not pull his punches against his eurosceptic rival. 

He told BFM TV: “I am not going to employ invective. I am not going to use cliches or insults. I’ll use hand-to-hand fighting to demonstrate that her ideas represent false solutions.” 

Ms Le Pen shot back, telling Reuters: “His programme seems to be very vague, but in reality it is a simple continuation of Socialist President Francois Hollande’s government.”

The Front National leader has called for France to ditch the euro and sharp curbs on immigration with her centrist pro-EU rival saying he wants to cut state regulations in the economy while protecting workers. 

In the first round of voting Mr Macron finished three points ahead of Ms Le Pen and is widely expected to pick up the bulk of the votes from socialists and centre-right supporters whose candidates were eliminated. 

The latest poll by Cevipof for Le Monde says Mr Macron will take 59 per cent of the votes compared to Ms Le Pen’s 41 per cent. 

According to the poll, 85 per cent said they knew which way they would vote, leaving 15 per cent to be swayed by the TV showdown tonight. 

Political commentators say the debate could also impact potential abstainers. 

One outgoing government minister said: “What he (Macron) has to do is to convince the people who didn’t vote for him (in the first round) and who do not agree with his programme that they will be respected.” 

Mr Macron hopes to win some of the 20 per cent of first round votes tat far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon secured in the first round under the banner of his political movement ‘France Unbowed’. 

More than 240,000 of France Unbowed’s 430,000 members took part in a survey about voting intentions, in which a vote for Ms Le Pen was not among the options.

The results of the survey showed that 36.1 per cent would aim for a blank vote, compared to 34.8 per cent for Mr Macron and 29.1 per cent aiming to abstain.

Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen will face-off on French TV at 8pm BST tonight.