How the plot to stop Marine Le Pen could backfire

At first, French elites haughtily dismissed the Rassemblement National and its voters. Then they were in denial about its rise. Now they are scrambling to block its path to victory in 2027 by all manner of subterfuge.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the RN and front-runner in the 2027 presidential election, will go on trial this October, with other RN party members, for the misuse of European parliamentary funds. Whereas members of Macron’s coalition were recently found guilty of similar misdemeanors, in the case of Le Pen the stakes are particularly high: a likely guilty verdict will see her declared ineligible for political office and thus eliminated from the presidential race.

France’s metropolitan elites are quite unembarrassed in their intention

To this day the elimination of political opponents and rivals through the weaponization of judicial investigation has been a feature of every presidential election since Pompidou’s presidency in 1969. The most egregious example, the elimination from the 2017 presidential race of the front-runner François Fillon for being under investigation following allegations of embezzlement, still awaits an appeal decision.

But in this case, the RN’s political opponents and cultural elites have held back from gloating for the simple reason that Marine Le Pen’s disqualification will see her replaced by the even more popular young and articulate Jordan Bardella, the unblemished party president likely to trounce Macron’s party in the June European elections. Worse still, opinion polls suggest that in the event of an RN candidate winning the presidential vote, the party will sweep the board in the legislative elections that follow, giving it a substantial working majority.

This explains a candid op-ed article in Le Monde this week by sixteen influential center-left politicians and academics calling for a change in the legislative voting system explicitly to “block the route to the extreme right.” During the 1960s, the authoritative French political scientist Maurice Duverger demonstrated how “the electoral system is the means to get democracy to say what one wants it to say.”

France’s metropolitan elites are quite unembarrassed in their intention. The present two round majority system introduced by General de Gaulle successfully limited the power of minority parties blamed for destabilizing and weakening the Fourth Republic. For years this winner-take-all system ensured that the Front National, as it was from 1972 to 2018, was all but shut out of parliament despite some 10 percent of votes.

Indeed, Le Pen’s party regularly campaigned for proportional representation to match votes to parliamentary representation. For a brief moment in 1986 under the socialist presidency of François Mitterrand, a cynical change in the voting system to proportional representation was effected to divide the French right and ensure a socialist victory in that year’s legislative elections. With a win secured, the system was switched back to the traditional two rounds and the number of Front National MPs dropped from thirty-five to one in 1988.

Fear that the RN could be the winner-that-takes-all in the 2027 parliamentary elections has galvanized left-leaning political elites to call for this “urgent” switch to proportional representation by a mere act of parliament because, in their words, “the future of democracy depends on it.” Meanwhile, given the RN’s intention to use referenda more generally, notably on immigration, there are calls for limits to be put on the use of the referendum as a legislative instrument.

The cynical manipulation of democracy to deny the will of the people in the interests of “those who know better” is a risky business. To do so in a country with France’s political and social history at a time when it is already on the edge is reckless. In 2022, Emmanuel Macron spoke in favor of a greater degree of proportional representation. He is also a risk taker. But were he to attempt such a maneuver now he would reap the whirlwind. 

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.