Many will have felt a huge sense of relief at the outcome of yesterday’s vote in the French presidential race – I certainly did. But to say the battle has been won against extremism and demagoguery, in this key test for liberal democracy in Europe, would be a daring assumption. Two weeks remain before the 7 May run-off, and that can be a long time in politics.

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What needs to happen now is to get the vote out. With the stakes so high now that Marine Le Pen has reached the second round, all hands are needed on deck to bring about her defeat. This means all those who, especially on the left, hesitate, falter and wince – or opt for full-on disruption – will hold a historical responsibility if it comes to the worst.

France did save its honour on Sunday. In the era of Brexit and Trump, this vote was a major pushback against forces that threaten the fundamental democratic values the west is meant to uphold. That Emmanuel Macron, the strongest liberal, reformist and pro-EU voice, came out first was impressive. For good reason this was swiftly applauded in Brussels and Berlin. To come so far was no mean feat for a 39-year-old with no experience of elected office, who launched his movement just a year ago.

The much worse news is that Le Pen, the Front National leader until she reportedly “stepped aside” today, garnered a record 7.6m votes. France’s dark political forces, whose racist and authoritarian roots lie in the 20th century, are far from neutralised. Le Pen has been preparing for this moment for years, trying to “detoxify” her party. Yesterday evening she said: “French people should seize this historic opportunity because what’s at stake is wild globalisation that endangers our civilisation.”

It’s true that many voices on the right, notably the conservative candidate François Fillon, immediately warned against “extremism” and announced they would rally behind Macron. It’s also true that opinion polls, which largely turned out to be right, predict a 35%-40% vote for Le Pen. But anti-establishment and anti-globalisation sentiment will not have evaporated overnight in France.

The agonising question now is whether a low turnout on 7 May, fuelled by a “neither Macron nor Le Pen” reflex among parts of the electorate, might yet produce a nightmare scenario. That would make Sunday’s collective sigh of relief look like a delusional moment.

Worryingly, the leftwing candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has so far refused to choose between Macron and Le Pen. If playing with fire in politics means anything, this was it. Mélenchon spoke dismissively of both, as if unable or unwilling to see the difference. He announced that his radical left movement, France Unbowed, would organise an online “consultation” designed to determine its position ahead of the run-off. It was as bewildering as it was disgraceful. And it was a deliberate attempt to deny or minimise what is now at play.

Yet the choice France now faces could not be more clear-cut: an open, liberal message versus a closed, illiberal one. A platform of inclusiveness versus one of bigotry and nationalist hatred. A promise to strengthen the European project through reform versus a pledge to close borders, introduce protectionism and pull out of Euro-Atlantic structures. It’s also a choice between a candidate who resolutely criticises President Putin and his worldview, and one who consistently panders to the Russian autocrat and has been financially dependent on his networks.

Mélenchon may yet come round and finally call on his supporters to vote for Macron – the obvious and only bulwark against a French political disaster. Some members of Mélenchon’s party have done so already, clearly ill at ease with his awkward silence. But for now this charismatic leader’s supporters have been left without guidance, and that matters because they represent 20% of those who voted.

Wittingly or not, the far-left and the Catholic ultras could both help Le Pen – and produce a nightmare scenario

It’s worth noting that ultra-conservative Catholic groups around the Sens Commun movement, which supported Fillon’s campaign, have also said they won’t choose between Macron and Le Pen. If these trends lead to more people abstaining then, wittingly or not, the far left and the Catholic ultras would both help Le Pen on 7 May: a collusion of the extremes.

Today’s radical leftwing ideas – be they from Mélenchon, or Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, or the current Labour leadership in Britain – have drawn support for fighting for tolerance, diversity, against austerity, and for activism on climate change and the environment. A new generation of voters wants to shake up “the system” – and the feeling is certainly strong in France where youth unemployment is high. But they should look closely at what they might be associated with.

For this generation the 20th century totalitarianisms, communism and nazism, may feel like ancient history. In the 1930s, communists often lumped socialists and the right into one bag: they called it “social-fascism”. George Orwell wrote eloquently about that dangerous trap.

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To some extent, this is what’s at stake in the final lap of the French election. Conflating Macron and Le Pen as two equally unacceptable propositions, because Macron is a former banker supposedly beholden to evil capitalism, is ridiculous. The centre needs to hold, when the alternative is the far-right.

At such a defining moment in French and European politics, surely there can be nothing more important than making sure a key democracy resists the sirens of the Front National, which would restore values from of the darkest eras of French history. Anti-establishment sentiment can be understandable, but if it’s indifferent to the outcome it produces, then that’s chaos and nihilism – not renewal. Believing that a political catastrophe must unfold for a utopia to rise from the ashes is a line of thought no one can afford. Not if they care about what makes democracy possible.