🇫🇷A crumbling dynasty

Le Pen faces five year ban from public office, Jordan Bardella attempts to solidify hold over the RN, and there’s a small increase in unemployment

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This week

• ️👮Le Pen faces five year ban from public office

• 💪Bardella attempts to solidify hold over the RN

• 📈Small increase in unemployment

️Editor’s note

So, as you may see there aren’t many pictures in this week’s dispatch, and that will be because it’s mostly been written in moments i’ve found between a marriage I’ve been attending in Northern Germany, as well as from the Deutsche Bahn, meaning the internet was not the best.

Hope you guys don’t mind, and don’t forget to like, share and subscribe if you enjoyed this week’s dispatch.

👮Le Pen faces five year ban from public office

Marine Le Pen in Russia in 2017 (Photo by Анна Исакова)

So, as you may have seen earlier this week, Marine Le Pen has found herself facing a very severe series of punishments which include

For a breakdown, you can read this summary from yours truly:

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As you can imagine, the reactions were divisive to say the least

Presidential hopeful and former Minister for the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, was quick to criticise the possibility, seeing this as a punishment out of fear for Le Pen

“It would be deeply shocking if Marine Le Pen were found to be ineligible and thus unable to stand for election by the French people. Madame Le Pen must be fought at the ballot box, not elsewhere. If the court rules that she must be condemned, she cannot be condemned electorally, without the expression of the People. Let's not be afraid of democracy, and let's avoid further widening the gap between the ‘elites’ and the vast majority of our fellow citizens.”

This received some severe criticisms, with the right-wing politician being criticised for defending the idea that politicians should not be punished to the full extent that normal citizens would be. He was also criticised for attempting to attract Marine Le Pen’s voters for his future presidential run.

Aside from this, we saw the majority of far-right actors getting up in arms over the possibility of Marine Le Pen being banned from running for office for five years, with people decrying a judicial system that was aggressive persecuting a far-right candidate who was the choice of the people.

There were even claims of a state-sponsored witch hunt, ignoring the independence of the judiciary. The unfortunate reality, however, is that these people want to act with impunity.

Despite the fact that the far-right constantly criticises the lax judicial system and the weakness of the policing and legal systems when it comes to criminals who happen to not be white French citizens, they then cry the moment that the judicial system tries to punish them.

The simply reality that many people need to come to terms with, is that if you do not want to be punished by the legal system, then perhaps you should simply not break the law.

Perhaps fabricating jobs in the European Parliament, so that you can embezzle funds and use them in France for personal financial and political gain, is something that you should avoid.

Perhaps attempting to steal hard-earned taxpayer money for your personal benefit is something that you should simply not do if you’re a public official.

Perhaps, you shouldn’t insult the intelligence of every single French citizen, and those from abroad, by pretending that you’re being victimised because you got caught and you’re going to reap what you sow.

But maybe that just requires a certain level of moral fibre and intellectual honesty that far-right political actors lack, to their great detriment.

At least Marine Le Pen could always go running to Russian banks for loans to cover her legal fees.

💪Bardella attempts to solidify hold over the RN

As all of this is happening, Jordan Bardella continues to attempt to break his own path, moving away from Marine Le Pen and fighting to solidify his hold over the Rassemblement National.

With Marine Le Pen also now facing the end of her career, it has become even more pressing for Bardella to create his own political myth, to create a pillar from which he would be able to control the unruly and unstable political structures of the far-right party.

With Jordan Bardella being one of the more popular politicians in France, despite his struggle to transform this into more votes for his party during the legislative elections, in protest or otherwise, the time seems ripe for him to begin to build towards a presidential challenge in 2027.

With the left, currently in a stage of transformation as the Nouveau Front Populaire continues to struggle to form a cohesive front, and with the Macronist currently working through some teething problems as they push to build a cohesive structure, the path seems open.

However, there’s one big problem ahead of him: the instability of his party.

With the far-right competitors to his right, led by Eric Zemmour and Marion Maréchal Le Pen both nipping at his heels, and Eric Ciotti’s far-right Les Républicains offshoot attempt to squeeze him from every so slightly to his left, there are plenty of areas for unhappy politicians to abandon ship if he doesn’t reward or protect them enough

Not only this, but he also needs to build a reputation for confidence in policy spheres, having had a disastrous series of debates during the 2024 European and French Legislative elections that showcased a lack of expertise and activity, which luckily had little impact on the protest votes that the RN benefits from heavily.

And while the French political scene continues to hold the line, and prevented the RN’s Matignon plan from being achieved with abroad if incredibly unstable political coalition to form a government, this may not necessarily be easy to maintain in the long-term.

If the government goes down in the summer of 2025, with the 2025 budget vote expected to be forced through the now famous Article 49.3, then Bardella will face his first real test as the successor to Marine Le Pen, where he will no longer benefit from the competency cover she gives him.

And that will be a fascinating moment.

📈Small increase in unemployment

As a quick note, it seems that unemployment rose ever so slightly in the third quarter of this year, with c.35,000 more people finding themselves unemployed.

Equalling to an increase of +0.1%, and raising the employment rate to 7.4%, this means that the unemployment rate has risen to 2.3 million unemployed, equal to a year ago. This falls to 7.2% if you only include Metropolitan France.

The highest level of unemployment that metropolitani France has ever seen was around 10,2% Q2 2015, and this traumatic aftermath of the polycrises of the early 2010s left it’s mark on the French political scene, with government continually working to push this number down as low as possible.

The lowest seen in the last 20 years for Metropolitan France was 6.9% in both Q4 2022 and Q1 2023

Of course, this doesn’t give the whole stories, with France incl. overseas territories and excl. Mayotte having seen highs of 10.5% in Q2 2015, and lows of 7.1% in Q4 2022 and Q1 2023.

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