Don’t write Marine Le Pen off yet – this fiasco could be a gift for the National Gallery, writes JONATHAN MILLER

Before her sentence was announced, a furious Marine Le Pen stormed out of the courtroom after being found guilty of embezzling EU funds, dashing her political ambition and infuriating 13 million voters who supported her party at the last national elections.

Shortly afterwards, the Paris criminal court delivered a verdict more severe than anyone anticipated. 

Though Le Pen has avoided the indignity of a custodial sentence, she will be forced to wear an ankle tag for two years. (They’re quite the fashion among senior French politicians: former president Nicolas Sarkozy has one, too.) 

But the most stinging punishment is the decision to bar her for five years from running for public office, which excludes her from the presidential election in 2027.

It’s a political earthquake for France: until yesterday, Le Pen was their strongest candidate, ahead in all polls.

Corruption is a serious matter, but the word ‘embezzlement’ exaggerates the crime here. The conviction comes after a wildly contorted saga in which Le Pen, 56, was accused of putting party staff on the payroll of the European Parliament. 

She didn’t profit personally and the dividing line between political and parliamentary work is gossamer-thin, of course.

Yet the French legal system, which is deeply political and unashamedly Leftist (so much so that its main magistrates’ union had a ‘Wall of Jerks’ in their office with pictures of Right-wingers) made it their mission to take down the nationalist Le Pen.

Marine Le Pen leaves the headquarters of the French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, after a French court sentenced her to a five-year ban on running for office and a prison term in a trial on charges of embezzlement of European public funds, in Paris on March 31, 2025

Jean-Marie Le Pen, left, and his daughter French far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Marseille, southern France, March 4, 2012

President Emmanuel Macron during arrival at Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris on 31 March 2025

As she licked her wounds in the Paris apartment she shares with her three children and six bengal cats, her conviction was gloatingly welcomed by the establishment Le Monde newspaper and the Paris commentariat as a death knell for her party, the National Rally.

But it is the opposite. This ugly fiasco is a gift for the National Rally. Already the French justice system is being accused of ‘lawfare’, interfering in an election and destroying the right of voters to make a democratic choice. 

‘Is France still a democracy?’ was the question being circulated on social media after the verdict.

The populist Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban posted his expression of solidarity on X: ‘Je suis Marine.’ So what now? Just as Donald Trump turned multiple mostly spurious criminal cases against him into a compelling argument that the ‘Deep State’ was out to get him, Le Pen will take the same line. 

Giving up is not in her character: she has failed three times to be elected president and has never been closer to the office.

In the face of accusations that National Rally was ‘extreme’ or ‘hard’ right, Le Pen has worked hard to detoxify the movement, expelling her late father Jean-Marie – an anti-Semite who championed Nazi collaborator Marshal Petain – from the party. 

It is now considered so increasingly centrist that some base supporters are abandoning it. ‘She’s a sell-out,’ a local hunter in my village in Occitanie, once a firm voter, told me.

Le Pen is certain to appeal, though there is no guarantee the court will hear it in time to overturn or reduce the verdict. 

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, member of parliament from the Rassemblement National leaves the courthouse on the day of the verdict of her trial in Paris, France, March 31, 2025

The leader of France’s National Rally (RN) Jordan Bardella, attends the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Israel, Thursday, March 27, 202

This court sketch created on March 31, 2025, shows President of the French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) parliamentary group, Marine Le Pen, attending the verdict and sentencing in her and co-defendant’s trial on charges of embezzlement of European public funds, at the Tribunal de Paris courthouse in Paris, on March 31, 2025

She could also proceed to the country’s Constitutional Council, arguing that the ruling undermines the electorate’s freedom. Or she could demand a presidential pardon from Emmanuel Macron – which he may be forced to grant out of magnanimity.

If the appeal fails and Le Pen really has been barred from winning the Elysée Palace herself, the man of the hour is her dauphin: square-jawed, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella. 

The son of Italian immigrants who grew up in a gang-ridden Banlieue, he’s TikTok-savvy, proudly of the Right and attracts young voters and women of all ages – who find him ‘easy on the eye.’

But it’s far too soon to write off Madame Le Pen. Like the bengal cats she breeds, she has many lives.

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