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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was this week banned from political office for five years and handed a four-year prison sentence after being found guilty of embezzling €4.4mn in EU funds.
While her allies in Europe have expressed concern over Le Pen’s conviction, many commentators have questioned what effect her exclusion will have on a nation — and a continent — grappling with the rise of populist ideals.
Before the court ruling was announced on Monday, Le Pen had been one of the two frontrunners to succeed French President Emmanuel Macron. That has now changed.
Not only is it a huge blow to her party, Rassemblement National — a top-down organisation in which Le Pen functions as the ultimate decision maker — it has also set the party on a more confrontational path, reports Leila Abboud.
Le Pen’s response has been to attack the decision as a political one designed to remove populist ideas from politics, emulating Donald Trump’s attack on judges who pursued him.
Supporters have rallied behind her, calling the move an assault on the democratic process. Her running mate and protégé, Jordan Bardella, protested the decision on social media site X, writing: “It is not only Marine Le Pen who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed.”
This is precisely the fight the far right wants. As Robert Shrimsley writes in a timely opinion piece on populist attacks on democracy, eroding trust in the judicial and political systems — depicting them as corrupt, partisan and out of touch — has been a successful strategy.
But we’d like to hear what you think. Will Le Pen’s strategy work and boost the far right’s popularity among those fed up with mainstream parties? Or will it encourage people to reconsider their support?
