(personal underlines)
Is France still a democracy?
Marine Le Pen has been declared ineligible to run for president of France. She has been given a suspended prison sentence, she will be barred from standing in elections for five years, and she will have to wear an ankle bracelet for two years. She will also have to pay a fine of €100,000 after she was found guilty of using European Parliament money to pay her own party’s salaries. This has been determined to have been embezzlement but her supporters describe it as a purely technical offence and her disqualification as lawfare.
The dramatic judicial intervention into the French presidential campaign is threatening to deny to voters the choice of the candidate who is ahead in all opinion polls. On the news channels this lunchtime, the question was being posed: is France still a democracy?
The conviction and punishment is being saluted this afternoon by Le Monde and the Parisian commentariat as a huge setback for her Rassemblement National populist party. That’s not clear. Indeed very little is now clear. She will appeal. Her supporters will talk of une guerre juridique. She may emerge stronger than ever, like Donald Trump, the victim of prolonged legal warfare himself.
The 2027 election is now at peak variable geometry. And it sets up intriguing scenarios. If her disqualification stands, and that’s not certain, she would be succeeded as her party’s presidential candidate by Jordan Bardella, who is 29 years old, has considerable political talent, and would be the first first-ever Millennial candidate for the French presidency. Bardella is bound to attract attention and is hugely popular with women who judge him easy on the eye. But then everything looks atomised. Macron can’t run again. Many are plotting.
Still, I’m not writing off Marine. She is the most resilient politician in France. She has run three times for the presidency and has never been closer. That the French judiciary, which is heavily politicised, should intervene to stop her, is going to raise some difficult questions and add fuel to the argument that lawyers have entangled themselves too deeply in politics.
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