Barack Obama has made a last-minute intervention in the French presidential election in support of Emmanuel Macron, saying “the success of France matters to the entire world”. Macron, a centrist, faces Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National in a runoff vote on Sunday. Polls put him 20 points ahead. The former US president said he had chosen to declare his support, in a video tweeted by Macron on Thursday afternoon, because of the importance of the election. “I’m not planning to get involved in many elections now that I don’t have to run for office but the French election is very important to the future of France and the values that we care so much about.”

Obama said he supported Macron because he appealed to “people’s hopes and not their fears” and ended, in French, with the words “Vive la France.”

The intervention comes a day after Macron and Le Pen met in a bruising televised debate that French media widely judged the frontrunner to have won. The two traded personal insults and clashed over how to fix the country’s sluggish economy and fight terrorism.(guardian)…[+]