Given the massive unpopularity of President Macron, his associates and most of his rivals, it will take one of two things to prevent Marine Le Pen from winning the 2027 presidential election.
The first is that all her opponents, as they have done before, agree on one thing – and one thing only – and mobilise a coalition to vote for anyone but her.
The second is that she is disqualified from being a candidate because convicted of a crime: and that brings us to a case currently before the courts in Paris.
MsLe Pen and 26 of her senior comrades from the Rassemblement National – formerly the Front National – are accused of having used European Union funds to employ staff on EU parliamentary business, but who spent their lives in France working for the party’s domestic campaigns.
Their failure to work in Brussels between 2004 and 2016 is alleged to have violated European Parliament rules, and is classed as embezzlement.
Ms Le Pen, a lawyer by profession, refused to take any of these accusations lying down.
She asserted, during three days in the witness box, that how she deployed her staff was none of the EU’s business; and she accused the judge of being biased.
The trial is scheduled to last until late November, and whether she wins or loses will depend upon an interpretation of EU rules, of which it is safe to say there is more than one.
If convicted, Ms Le Pen and her co-defendants each face up to ten years in jail and fines of €1 million.
She could also be barred from public office for five years, which is where the possibility of her not fighting the presidential election – it would be her fourth and potentially most promising attempt – arises.
It is worth speculating on the consequences of a judge deciding to award such a penalty.
Many would take the view that it was blatantly partisan and an attempt to thwart the democratic will – irrespective of whether or not it was clear that the law had been broken and that the offenders had simply got what was coming to them.
French public opinion is so febrile and divided over the best route for the country’s future that a severe punishment of Ms Le Pen could derail respect for legal and political institutions.
More to the point, her main line of attack when giving evidence – that the EU is a corrupt, anti-democratic organisation in no position to tell her or anyone else how to conduct democratic relations with the French public – is one that is likely to attract more sympathy than hostility among a sizeable number of French voters.
Ms Le Pen has been disobliged by one of her former staffers, Catherine Griset, who admits rarely having spent more than two nights a week in Brussels when she was contractually obliged to be there permanently.
Her former boss has responded not just with insults about the EU and the judge, but with a philosophical discourse about what right the EU has to dictate the way MEPs operate.
French politicians on trial
What might also be at the back of her mind is that the threat, and even the imposition, of serious penalties on leading French politicians has in recent history had very little effect: and the political class and the people they purport to represent are well aware of this, and expect little as a consequence.
For example: Jacques Chirac’s long mayoralty of Paris from 1977 to 1995 was riddled with allegations of corruption; and, when president in 1999, Chirac was granted immunity from prosecution so long as he was president, as more and more allegations from the past came forward and risked torpedoing his presidency entirely.
One of the main allegations was that he had, as mayor, expanded the city’s payroll vastly to give jobs to more than 2,000 people from his native Corrèze.
He was also profligate with money while mayor, not least entertaining people at expensive and lavish receptions that appeared to benefit no-one apart from himself and his political prospects.
As soon as his immunity ended with his retirement from the presidency in 2007 he was investigated for misuse of public funds, and in 2009 charged with embezzlement. He was found guilty in 2011 of having invented 28 jobs for political cronies, and given a suspended sentence of two years.
His age, his state of health and his ‘status’ as an ex-president were what saved him from jail.
His successor as president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was in 2021 found guilty of trying to bribe a judge and of exceeding spending limits in his unsuccessful 2012 re-election campaign.
He has twice been convicted of corruption, and as things stand is expected to spend six months in prison for his campaign finance fraud.
He is also supposed to be serving a separate sentence for his second corruption conviction at home, on an electronic tag.
An appeals process is continuing, and it remains to be seen whether Sarko will yet be sewing mailbags in a French prison.
And least, but probably not last, the man who was Sarko’s rather effective prime minister throughout his presidency, François Fillon – who until his disgrace was one of the more feasible political figures of the entire Fifth Republic – was convicted of fraud in 2020 for having put his wife and two of their children on the public payroll.
The timing of his original charges for embezzlement – in the spring of 2017 – effectively ended his very good chances of becoming president.
He was sentenced to five years in jail, three of which were suspended, reduced to four years with three suspended on appeal. He remains at liberty pending another appeal.
The French public seem to have come to expect their politicians to be crooks; Ms Le Pen’s alleged crookery seems far less serious than that of some the others.
Even if convicted, I suspect she will fight in 2027 – if she lodges an appeal it would probably not happen until after the deadline – and if she does not win it will have nothing to do with the courts.
Do you agree with Simon Heffer? Would banning a politician from holding office be undemocratic? Let us know via letters@connexionfrance.com
