20 hours agoShareSaveAndrew HardingParis correspondentShareSaveBBCOutrage is a precious political currency and France’s far right has spent this week attempting, furiously and predictably, to capitalise on the perceived injustice of a court’s decision to block its totemic leader, Marine Le Pen, from standing in the 2027 presidential election.Listen to Andrew read this articleThe airwaves have been throbbing with indignation.”Be outraged,” said one of Le Pen’s key deputies, on French television, in case anyone was in doubt as to what their reaction should be.But it remains unclear whether Le Pen’s tough sentence will broaden support for her party, the National Rally (RN), or lead to greater fragmentation of the French far right. Either way, it has created a feverish mood among the nation’s politicians.Le Pen and her allies have boldly declared that France’s institutions, and democracy itself, have been “executed”, are “dead”, or “violated”. The country’s justice system has been turned into a “political” hit squad, shamelessly intervening in a nation’s right to choose its own leaders. And Marine Le Pen has been widely portrayed, with something close to certainty, as France’s president-in-waiting, as the nation’s most popular politician, cruelly robbed of her near-inevitable procession towards the Élysée Palace.”The system has released a nuclear bomb, and if it is using such a powerful weapon against us, it is obviously because we are about to win the elections,” Le Pen fumed at a news conference, comparing herself to the poisoned, imprisoned, and now dead Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.As France assesses its latest political tremors, an uneven pushback has begun.No clear frontrunner for presidentNervous about the impact the judgement may have for the country’s frail coalition government, the Prime Minister François Bayrou has admitted to feeling “troubled” by Le Pen’s sentence and worried about a “shock” to public opinion.But other centrist politicians have taken a firmer line, stressing the need for a clear gap between the justice system and politics.Getty ImagesAn early opinion poll appears to show the French public taking a calm line, bursting – or at least deflating – the RN’s bubble of outrage. The poll, produced within hours of the court’s ruling, showed less than a third of the country – 31% – felt the decision to block Le Pen, immediately, from running for public office, was unjust. Tellingly, that figure was less than the 37% of French people who recently expressed an interest in voting for her as president.In other words, plenty of people who like her as a politician also think it reasonable that her crimes should disqualify her from running for office.And remember, French presidential elections are still two years away – an eternity in the current political climate.Emmanuel Macron is not entitled to stand for another term and no clear alternative to Le Pen, from the left or centre of French politics, has yet emerged. Le Pen’s share of the vote has consistently risen during her previous three failed bids for the top job but it is premature, at best, to consider her a shoo-in for 2027.Le Pen’s crime and punishmentAnyone who followed the court case against her and her party colleagues in an impartial fashion would struggle to conclude that the verdicts in Le Pen’s case were unreasonable.The evidence of a massive and coordinated project to defraud the European Parliament and its associated taxpayers included jaw-droppingly incriminating emails suggesting officials knew exactly what they were doing, and the illegality of their actions.That the corruption was for the party, not for personal gain, surely changes nothing. Corruption is corruption. Besides, other parties have also been found guilty of similar offences.Getty ImagesRegarding the punishments handed out by the court, here it seems fair to argue that Le Pen and her party made a strategic blunder in their approach to the case. Had they acknowledged the facts, and their errors, and cooperated in facilitating a swift trial rather than helping to drag the process out for almost a decade, the judges – as they’ve now made clear – might have taken their attitude towards the case into consideration when considering punishments.”Neither during the investigation nor at the trial did [Le Pen] show any awareness of the need for probity as an elected official, nor of the ensuing responsibilities,” wrote the judges in a document explaining, often indignantly, why they’d delivered such a tough sentence.They berated Le Pen for seeking to delay or avoid justice with “a defence system that disregards the uncovering of the truth”.Hypocrisy among the eliteIt is worth noting, here, the wider hypocrisy demonstrated by elites across France’s political spectrum who have recently been muttering their sympathy for Le Pen. It is nine years since MPs voted to toughen up the laws on corruption, introducing the very sanctions – on immediately banning criminals from public office – that were used by the judges in this case.That toughening was welcomed by the public as an antidote to a judicial system stymied by an indulgent culture of successive appeals that enabled – and sometimes still enables – politicians to dodge accountability for decades.Le Pen is now being gleefully taunted by her critics online with the many past instances in which she has called for stricter laws on corruption.”When are we going to learn the lessons and effectively introduce lifelong ineligibility for those who have been convicted of acts committed while in office or during their term of office?” she asked in 2013.Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the court’s sentencing decisions in Le Pen’s case. But the notion – enthusiastically endorsed by populist and hard-right politicians across Europe and the US – that she is a victim of a conspiratorial political plot has clearly not convinced most French people.At least not yet.Future of France’s far rightSo where does this verdict – clearly a seismic moment in French politics – leave the National Rally and the wider far-right movement?The short answer is that no one knows. There are so many variables involved – from the fate of Le Pen’s fast-tracked appeal, to the RN’s succession strategy, to the state of France’s precarious finances, to the broader political climate and the see-sawing appetite for populism both within France and globally – that predictions ar …
