Le Pen: Far Right Leader Battling For Political Survival

Paris, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 31st Mar, 2025) Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has over the last year displayed the influence she wields in France after a long campaign to make her party an electable force, but now faces a trial verdict that risks banishing her from politics for good.

Le Pen in 2011 took over leadership of the National Front (FN) from her father Jean-Marie, who co-founded France’s main postwar far-right movement.

Distancing it from the legacy of her father, who openly made anti-Semitic and racist statements, she renamed the party the National Rally (RN) and embarked on a policy she dubbed “dediabolisation” (“de-demonisation”)

The work bore fruit in the snap legislative polls last summer, with the RN emerging as the largest single party in the National Assembly, although without the outright majority it had targeted.

That gave Le Pen unprecedented power over French politics, which she used by backing a no-confidence vote that toppled the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier later in the year.

Critics accuse the party of still being inherently racist, taking too long to distance itself from Russia and resorting to corrupt tactics to ease its strained finances, allegations Le Pen denies.

But playing on people’s day-to-day concerns about immigration and the cost of living, Le Pen is now seen as having her best chance to win the French presidency in 2027 after three unsuccessful attempts.

– ‘Political target’ –

But a major hurdle awaits on Monday.

Le Pen, 56, and other RN defendants have been on trial accused of creating fake jobs at the EU parliament, and if convicted when the verdict is delivered Monday she would likely be disqualified from running in the presidential election two years away.

Prosecutors have asked for a jail sentence and a ban from public office that would apply immediately, even if she appeals. The defendants all deny any wrongdoing.

Le Pen says that prosecutors wanted her “political death”, adding that she was being put on trial as a “political target”.

Her young lieutenant and protege Jordan Bardella, 29, who is the RN party chief, is not among the accused in the trial and is also seen as a potential presidential contender should Marine Le Pen fall.

Last year, he published his first book “Ce que je cherche” (“What I am looking for”) describing growing up in poor Paris suburbs and his political vision.

And this month he became the first RN party leader to visit Israel, speaking at a conference on the fight against anti-Semitism.

In a comment seen by some as a shot across the bow of Le Pen, Bardella told French television last year that “not having a criminal record is, for me, rule number one when you want to be an MP”.

While opponents dubbed him “Brutus” after the Roman politician who assassinated ex-ally Julius Ceasar, Le Pen denied there were any tensions with her protege, saying they had a “relationship of trust”.