Judiciaries are odd beasts. Intended as independent arbiters to uphold the rule of law and thus safeguard the rights of citizens, they are, being comprised of humans with all the accompanying baggage that entails, prone to be influenced by external influences that can politicise their judgments, serve their self interest and inflate their sense of importance and power. The fact that they are judges does not automatically mean that they are purer than the driven snow.
In “advanced” democracies – if that means anything anymore – there has been an ongoing debate for decades over the perceived conflict between judges enforcing laws, including political ones, and electorates often at odds with those judgments, wondering what their votes count for if an unelected judiciary can over-rule them. The latest, striking example of that conflict has just broken out in France, with a court decision banning the National Rally leader, Marine Le Pen, from running as president in 2027.
The court found her guilty of the embezzlement of EU funds – an outrageous crime as only the EU is permitted to do that. Among her punishments, she is barred from being a presidential candidate for the next five years, at the time when her National Rally party is riding high in the polls and thus threatening the French political establishment. Now, it may be the case that Le Pen is wholly guilty of the charges of embezzlement laid against her – after all, she is a politician, and a French one, to boot (they do have form, don’t they?) – but she may be innocent, or somewhere between the two (it does not appear to be black and white). To many people the judgment looks downright suspicious. It follows the strategy of the liberal progressive establishment in America using lawfare in attempting to prevent Trump from running in various states before the 2024 election. That, in turn, followed on from years of dubious, inflated or entirely fabricated charges laid against him to criminalise his name, in a vain attempt to turn enough voters away from him and thus ensure that he lost the presidential race. Lib-prog strategists, cocooned from normal society, failed to entertain the prospect of that approach spectacularly backfiring.
The Le Pen verdict sits uneasily for many because legal judgments made on political issues overwhelmingly support the establishment position of liberal progressives and condemn anyone seen as a populist threat to that position.
That is undoubtedly the case of the EU and its dubiously named European Court of Justice ruling against the likes of reactionary Hungary and the previous regime in Poland for not toeing the EU line on any number of issues. In Romania democracy is being swept aside with the full support of the EU. Governments that opposed EU policies during the Eurozone crisis years, such as in Italy and Greece, had unelected technocratic governments imposed upon them. Too little is said of the EU’s egregious interference in Ukraine’s electoral process in 2013-14. All this and much, much more has been condoned by judges. Matteo Salvini, Deputy PM of Italy, declared that the verdict against Le Pen “is a declaration of war by Brussels”. Conceited pro-EU media types have been quick to dismiss Salvini’s remarks as being ignorant, as the judgment comes from a French court. But this is disingenuous: national and EU judiciaries are intricately interwoven, both providing indulgent sinecures for judges across the continent. Elitism continues to ensure that its own prosper.
Even when establishment figures are found guilty, they are only given a little slap on the wrist and are quickly rehabilitated back into establishment ranks. Look at Britain’s Peter Mandelson: despite being found guilty of numerous financial shenanigans as a cabinet minister, he was made a peer, an EU commissioner and now Ambassador to the US. The gravy train also kept rolling for France’s Christine Lagarde: the former head of the International Monetary Fund, despite being found guilty of serious professional negligence in 2016, didn’t even have to pay a fine; she is now president of the European Central Bank. The courts ensure that the establishment looks after its own.
In the case of Le Pen, the verdict of guilty is one thing, but it is the process that is the punishment. Like Trump, she we will be dragged back into the courts, a continuous reminder to voters, as the next presidential election draws nearer, that the National Rally leader is a convicted felon. The smear, whether justified or not, will be a hairshirt that Le Pen will have no choice but to wear, very ostentatiously, in full view of the media.
The French establishment has long been at war with National Rally, never ceasing to denounce it pejoratively as a “far right” threat. This court judgment will therefore be seen by many as reinforcing an old French saying: “He who wants to drown his dog accuses him of rabies.”
