expose, France

French elections: Le Pen and Macron face off

April 12, 2022
12:20

French elections: Le Pen and Macron face off in French elections as far right Le Pen gains ground, election set to be a tight race.

Could Marine Le Pen win the French elections?

What is happening?

Labour’s Keir Starmer pledges to resign if he is fined for Covid breach

May 10, 2022

Beergate: Keir Starmer pledges to resign if he is fined – a look at how the media reacted to the announcement from Starmer and Rayner.

What are the facts?

Marine Le Pen gained ground in first round of presidential elections on Sunday.
The far-right candidate will face President Macron for the top job.
They battled it out five years ago, but results suggest Macron is now facing a tougher fight.
Final vote on 24 April.
Le Pen is a far-right candidate, President Macron is a centrist.

Macron must work hard France24 writes Macron goes into the April 24 run-off with a starkly diminished reservoir of votes in what large swaths of the country have come to see as a choice of “the lesser of two evils”.

Media Bias

Keir Starmer is accused of piling pressure on police with threat to quit if he’s fined over Beergate

The Daily Mail accuses Sir Keir of putting pressure on detectives who now know that their decisions could decapitate the official opposition.

“Macron destroyed the left-right divide” Aljazeera says Virginie Martin, a research professor at Kedge Business School, said the runoff is a consequence of an increasingly polarised France, with each of the top two candidates presenting two different images of society.

Media Bias

Keir Starmer’s pledge to resign could force police to drop party probe

Keir Starmer’s ‘desperate’ pledge to resign could force police to drop party probe

The Sun describes the Labour leader’s announcement as a desperate and outrageous attempt to strong-arm police into clearing him.

"A profound reconfiguration" The Conversation says The momentum of the strategic vote, which picked up barely a month before the first round, appears to confirm the restructuring of the French political field around three major poles dating back to the 2017 election.

Media Bias

Keir Starmer’s ‘honour and integrity’ as he vows to quit if he’s fined over Beergate

The Daily Mirror contrasts his move with the prime minister’s refusal to go after he was fined. “This is what honour looks like, Mr Johnson” is the paper’s headline.

Rise in far right ABC says the far-right insurgent reshaping the race for the French presidency, adding "their society is cracking apart".

Media Bias

Keir Starmer’s gamble could be the making of him — as long as it works

FT says the Labour leader has struggled to define himself with voters. By offering to resign if he is fined by police he stands in sharp contrast to Boris Johnson