Convict Candidate Marine Le Pen, Glucksmann Considers PS Primary
Marine Le Pen works around her conviction, Bardella settles for Matignon, and Socialists launch a scramble to find someone who can beat the RN in 2027.
šHey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more news and information on the world around us is entirely funded by paid subscriptions and donations.
If you enjoy reading articles written by high-level experts, then make sure to support the publication by liking, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends and colleagues, and consider taking a paid subscription.
This week
šMarine Le Pen + Rassemblement National convicted
š¢Bardella relegated to Prime Ministerial candidate
š¤Glucksmann considers friendship with PS
šMarine Le Pen + Rassemblement National convicted
So, ladies and gentlemen, the big news of the week: Marine Le Pen and her party of criminal neāer-do-wells have been convicted of financial embezzlement and several other offences, and through the luck of being wealthy politicians, have somehow avoided doing hard prison time.
For reference, Marine Le Pen is now ineligible to practice as a lawyer, and Jean Valjean spent 19 years in prison for stealing some bread.
If you want to read more about the details of this, you can read it here on The French Dispatch:
Le Pen Convicted: Three Years Prison, ā¬100k Fine, but Eligible for the Presidency
The clock, not the bench, just cleared her for a 2027 run, but whether Marine Le Pen will run a campaign wearing an ankle tag or not is the question the Rassemblement National now has to answer.
And of course, Iām always curious about your opinions on the conviction of convicted criminal Marine Le Pen, so drop them below in the comments.
š¢Bardella relegated to Prime Ministerial candidate
For most of the past year, Bardella behaved like a man expecting to be the nominee. He built out his own foreign profile with trips abroad, including to Poland, was actively attempting to build a contrast between himself and the other candidates, especially Gabriel Attal, and he ran a distinct line on the retirement age that put him at odds with Le Penās own 2022 platform.
During his time running the show, Bardellaās polling numbers climbed to between 33 and 38% as a standalone candidate, with his favourability nearly doubling to reach 40% by late June.
Le Parisien reported that he described the position as āHyperinconfortable,ā caught between preparing to replace Le Pen and not wanting to look like he was pushing her out, attempting to manage all of the internal dynamics as a non-Le Pen replacing the heiress to the throne.
Some commentators have argued that Bardellaās entire pitch, a leader who wasnāt a Le Pen by blood, was central to the RNās case that it had shed its dynastic reputation and had moved beyond its often sombre past.
The unity since the verdict has been carefully staged, and some of it predates the ruling itself. At an RN fĆŖte champĆŖtre in LiĆ©vin on 4 July, which was almost staged like a slow-motion handover, Le Pen told Bardella, according to Le Parisien: āIn any case, we will run this campaign together, my dear Jordan.ā
The two then rode to the TF1 studios in the same car on verdict night and made their first joint campaign stop the next morning in La FlĆØche, a Sarthe town the RN won in this yearās municipal elections. Bardella told reporters there that it was neither relief nor disappointment, and that he was glad his mentor got to carry the partyās colours, and that he was obviously incredibly happy about the result.
People close to Le Pen describe something closer to a comedown than contentment: āItās normal that thereās a backlash,ā one adviser said, noting that polling above 30% as a likely presidential contender is not nothing to walk back from and indicating that they expected some kind of tensions internally.
What the staging doesnāt resolve is the problems and resentments that will run beneath the surface. The Rassemblement Nationalās leadership met again on Friday for a second closed-door seminar on the campaign platform, and the sharpest disagreement so far is over the retirement age: Bardella has pushed all year for the 62-year threshold to rise, while Le Pen keeps insisting a lower one remains her position.
Now the reason for this is fairly simple: Macron and the liberals all pushed for a rise in the retirement age for economic reasons, and the populist backlash meant that the only popular position was to run against this.
However, since the discussion exploded last year, Bardella has been clear behind the scenes that he didnāt necessarily support lowering the retirement age again and tended to dodge the question.
Officially, the party will run on one programme regardless of who leads it, but Le Penās decision to force her candidacy despite the ongoing legal issues, and whatever the judicial logic behind it, is also a decision about whose name the platform ultimately answers to and whose political career is subservient to whom.
The fact that she is doing this despite the fact that Bardella already outpolls her by four points in a potential second-round against Ćdouard Philippe, an event that he will not even get to run in, will continue to be a painful event in Bardellaās career.
And it will be even worse if Le Penās legal issues end up costing them the Presidency.
š¤Glucksmann considers friendship with PS
To wrap up the week: Raphaƫl Glucksmann is currently weighing his options and his allies ahead of the 2027 presidential elections (Source: everyone but Raphaƫl Glucksmann.)
Glucksmannās political position has been the focus of increasingly strenuous analysis over the past few months, especially after his 4,000-person-strong 2027 campaign launch event in Paris last month.
And this has become more pressing: following months of dithering, the Parti Socialisteās militants finally made a decision and voted this Thursday for a āclosedā primary in October, open only to party members and allied āpĆ“le socialisteā groups like Glucksmannās own Place Publique. However, it was only supported by 55.5% of the militants.
You can imagine that the 44.5% who voted against this wanted a primary that included the entire left, including far-left boogeyman Jean-Luc MĆ©lenchon.
While First Secretary Olivier Faure achieved one of his goals, this result is technically a defeat for the left-wing leader who wanted the vote thrown open to sympathisers who had paid a two-euro participation fee instead, and it buries any hope of the wider unity primary with the Greens, Communists, and ex-Insoumis that heād been pitching and campaigning for these past few months.
Importantly, however, the actual rules of the contest, meanwhile, are still being written by an āinter-party committeeā that hasnāt met yet, so there may even be a way of these actors being involved.
Candidates are already piling into what is, on paper, a fairly small pond. PS deputy Philippe Brun got there first, on 30 June. His colleague JĆ©rĆ“me Guedj has been eyeing the ĆlysĆ©e since February, and Friday brought the real surprise: SĆ©golĆØne Royal, the partyās 2007 nominee, announced on X that she was running āwith humility, no ego,ā under the banner of a tranquil France and a just order.
Nothing says humility like a third act from a failed politician who burnt her reputation with conspiratorial nonsense during COVID.
Place Publique welcomed the vote as an āoutstretched handā from PS militants and said talks with their socialist friends would begin very quickly to figure out what was possible for both parties.
Interestingly, one PS official said the quiet part out loud, and stated that the primary was practically designed to measure for Glucksmann, and on the other hand, Glucksmannās team spent that same day telling France Inter thereās no guarantee he actually takes part, and floated running without a primary at all if the terms donāt suit him and the polling allows him a significant margin of success.
However, Faure isnāt leaving him much room to dodge a primary: anyone who wants PS backing, he argued, has to submit to a vote of the membership, and made it clear to any potential candidates that āyou donāt win a presidential election by hiding.ā
Faure also hasnāt ruled out running in the primary himself, despite the heavyweight candidates beginning to pile up around him. Faure is releasing a book on his vision for France, due out in September, and, as a staple of French presidential declarations, his candidacy is almost guaranteed. Meanwhile, his chief internal rival, Boris Vallaud, has directly announced his participation in the primary: āI want a fight.ā
Add rumours of Bernard Cazeneuve and a Hollande-shaped safety net waiting in reserve should the PS still be stuck by winter, and the primary built to crown Glucksmann might end up settling something else entirely.
Problematically for the PS, any candidate who makes it through is not guaranteed to be the most popular with the wider French population, and, even worse, the ever-more aggressive shadow of Jean-Luc MĆ©lenchon will continue to weigh over the proceedings like a blanket, suffocating the political potential of any centre-left candidate.
Thank you for reading the French Dispatch! If you liked what you read, you should like this post and subscribe to the newsletter by clicking/tapping the button below:
And if youād like to contribute a coffee or two to help fuel my coverage of the wild world of politics, feel free to click on the picture below:
