Democracy need not, as the adage goes, always die in darkness. These days, the surgical light of a courtroom appears to do the trick.
Marine Le Pen, the right-wing frontrunner to become France’s next president, has just been barred from holding office for five years after being convicted of embezzling EU funds to pay party staff.
The ruling, delivered by a French court on Monday, is the latest entry in a growing genre of populists blocked from power by unelected judges.
The judge in Le Pen’s case found she was “at the heart” of a scheme to siphon off more than €4 million ($6 million CAD) to pay staff of her National Rally party. The case was solid, and the evidence damning. Le Pen is appealing the conviction, with a decision expected next year.
There is no evidence the ruling was politically motivated. But it was the court’s decision to order a “provisional execution” of the sentence — meaning the ban takes immediate effect despite her ongoing appeal — that has upended French politics. This extraordinary move, rarely used for financial crimes, has fuelled speculation of a stitch-up
Le Pen is hardly the only politician to run afoul of EU budgetary rules. François Bayrou, now prime minister, was cleared of a similar offence. Others have faced accusations without being barred from office. The book, it seems, has only ever been thrown at Le Pen.
With that ruling, her 2027 presidential bid is effectively dead. The leader of France’s largest party has been removed from the ballot — not by the people, but by the court. Millions of voters have, in a sense, been disenfranchised.
While much of France’s media and political class cheered the ruling — finding it just, or simply convenient — it may prove a pyrrhic victory.
In a single afternoon, the thread connecting France’s voters to their political future was cut. The men holding the scissors were judges who, though unknown to most Frenchmen, have immense political power that is now plain for all to see.
Le Pen, for her part, has no intention of going quietly. The 56-year-old political veteran, who inherited and moderated the party founded by her antisemitic firebrand father, Jean-Marie, has had one ambition for most of her life: to lead France.
After the verdict was read, effectively crushing that dream, Le Pen stormed out of the courtroom. “Let’s be quite clear, I’ve been eliminated — but in reality it’s millions of French people whose votes have been eliminated this evening as we speak,” she later said.
If this line sounds familiar, it’s because it mirrors the rhetoric of her American counterpart. “In the end, they’re not coming after me,” said Donald Trump. “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”
Trump’s legal troubles were widely seen — often rightly — as politically motivated. As a result, each one strengthened his support. The mugshot and courtroom became a campaign platform more effective than any political advert. Le Pen’s downfall may do the same for France’s populist right.
She may not benefit directly, but her deputy, the 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, untainted by her brand, will likely channel it to boost his own presidential bid.
Already, Le Pen is being lionized abroad. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, declared “Je suis Marine!” on X. Matteo Salvini of Italy and Holland’s Geert Wilders quickly followed suit with their support. The populist right, fragmented for years, is gaining coherence as a global movement. What once appeared to be isolated grievances now looks like a trend.
Nor is Le Pen’s case unique. In Romania, last year’s presidential election was suspended after a court ruled it compromised by Russian interference, via TikTok, just as the populist candidate was surging in the polls.
Thierry Breton, then EU commissioner, later boasted: “We did it in Romania and we will obviously have to do it if it is necessary in Germany,” in a thinly veiled threat to the AfD.
In Germany, the AfD, now the country’s second-largest party, was excluded from coalition talks by an all-party consensus to isolate them. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was barred from office for eight years after questioning the election he lost.
Across the democratic world, the same pattern emerges. A loose alliance of anti-establishment populists is being met with increasing resistance from judges, bureaucrats, and global institutions.
None of this is proof of a coordinated conspiracy. But to many voters, especially those already distrustful of institutions, it increasingly looks like one. In politics, perception often matters more than fact.
Le Pen’s removal could accelerate something which now appears to be underway: namely, the consolidation of a more coherent populist bloc that is increasingly motivated to confront the legalistic machinery it believes is set against it.
The court clipped Le Pen’s wings — but in doing so, it may have given flight to something far larger.
Michael Murphy is a journalist based in London. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and presented the documentary ‘Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland’. You can follow him on X: @michaelmurph_y.
