Judges make a martyr of Le Pen

French authorities, in sentencing Marine Le Pen on embezzlement charges and barring her from running for the presidency in 2027, have failed to learn the lesson of the Biden administration’s counter-productive and ultimately futile attempt to use lawfare to stymie Donald Trump. The likely outcome of Ms Le Pen’s prosecution on relatively inconsequential charges dating back to 2004 is that she will exploit the mantle of martyrdom she has been handed by the French establishment and assume the aura of a modern Joan of Arc.

The trial judges doubtless believe they have removed from the political battlefield a popular politician who polls show would have had a strong chance of winning in 2027. But in doing so they have enraged 12 million voters who supported her at the last election and fed the culture of deep anti-establishment grievance that propels the hard right in France and across the world. As with Mr Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, among others, there was never going to be a better way of goading voters to support Ms Le Pen than to prosecute her rather than put faith in an election to decide her fate.

The charges of misappropriating public funds on which, in addition to being barred from office, she was given a four-year jail sentence – reduced to two suspended and two tagged – have all the hallmarks of modern political lawfare and selective enforcement. Between 2019 and 2022 more than 130 European parliament members stumbled over the same vague financial rules she was convicted of contravening, without suffering the consequences she faced. Most such cases were settled after they repaid the money – which Ms Le Pen did in 2023 when she repaid €330,000. But French prosecutors continued to throw the book at her. Sound familiar?

There is much that is distasteful about Ms Le Pen’s politics and the antecedents of her party, which was founded by her late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a racist and Holocaust denier. There are many reasons to be wary of her policy ideas. But with her conviction, French authorities are playing straight into her populist political pitch – that she speaks truths “the establishment” doesn’t want French voters to hear. The French court’s decision could yet provide Ms Le Pen with her Donald Trump moment.