Opinion: For Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage, the electorate is the only court that counts

Much of the success of global populist movements, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban, has arisen from their ability to present themselves as genuine, uncontaminated, “apolitical” voices of the “people”. They convince voters they are the silent majority – those dispossessed and alienated from a democratic system subverted by elites, technocrats and experts. When exposed as just as corrupt as the elites they claim to oppose, it becomes critically important to throw themselves on the mercy of the people to re-legitimise their project. An election usually does the trick, reminding their opponents of their popularity with voters. Marching in step, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen have responded with similar defiance to legal and political challenges to their dubious financial dealings. Never closer to power, the battle-hardened populist campaigners’ common, implausible, message is: “Done nothing wrong. Qui, moi? Let the people decide.” Call it the Michael Lowry gambit.Last week both borrowed from Donald Trump’s playbook, throwing themselves on the mercy of the ultimate court, the voters. The leader of Reform UK is doing so in a manufactured byelection in Clacton, while the leader of France’s Rassemblement National (RN), who was barred from office by the court, has now been restored as her party’s 2027 presidential candidate. Both claim to be victims of the “establishment”. READ MORE Le Pen, the one-time champion of “lifetime ineligibility sentences for elected officials convicted of embezzling public funds” who successfully challenged the ban against her running for election, despite the court upholding her conviction for misappropriating €2.8 million in European Parliament funds, is set to become the first French presidential candidate to have her conviction upheld. A point of law is at issue in her appeal to the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest criminal appeals court, though it looked for a time as though she faced the prospect of campaigning with an electronic tag on her leg.Farage failed to register a £5 million (€5.8 million) gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne and reports suggest he did not declare other benefits from his long-time ally and convicted criminal, George Cottrell. But he will be free to stand in the byelection because the parliamentary inquiry he faces has not yet found him to be in breach of the rules, and the fact that there is an inquiry is not an impediment to standing. In the byelection, moreover, his primary opponent is joke candidate Count Binface. The main parties are sensibly refusing to take part in his street theatre.Under French law, the presumption of innocence applies until all appeals have been exhausted, allowing Le Pen to continue to maintain her innocence despite two court rulings finding her guilty of embezzlement. And so we are left with two innocents on the campaign trail. [ Marine Le Pen’s decision to run for French presidency is a big gambleOpens in new window ] They both calculate that a popular mandate can be a literal or metaphorical free pardon, although in fact the charges and their consequences do not go away entirely. But are these two really making the brave gambles that many commentators lead us to believe? Might the public not resent being asked to back a convict for the prestigious role of President de la Republique, or to embrace friend-of-millionaires, man-of-the-people Farage? Trump’s walk-on-water electoral experience and repeated defiance of “judicial persecution” would suggest not. His angry voters lapped up all the conspiracy theories and loved him all the more, though less so these days. He famously said in 2016 he could stand in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue “and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”. It is possible to imagine Le Pen boastfully shaking her leg and ankle monitor at adoring election crowds with the refrain “look what they’ve done to me now”. By refocusing public attention on elections, both are gambling they can change the narrative from their less credible calls to clean up politics – the RN long-time slogan was “Clean hands and head held high” – to raising the banner of brave, demonised fighters for the people against the ruling elite. Farage, strangely more reticent in public these days, put it to his voters in Clacton they should “stick two fingers” up to the “establishment”. That very establishment of billionaires that he cosies up to.[ Weary Clacton repels media hordes as Jaywick shines on in Farage’s byelection strongholdOpens in new window ]The anti-politics climate in which both parties have thrived allows populism to don the cloak of put-upon democrats. But there is another dynamic at play: both party leaders are also trying to broaden their appeal beyond their radical right-wing, anti-immigrant base and to court respectability. The law-and-order voters of Middle England may balk at Farage’s contempt for the rule of law.And as Le Monde wrote of Le Pen, who has spent two decades rebranding the party’s racist image, “the populist reflex and the attempt to recast a serious breach of integrity as martyrdom, however, fit poorly in a party now so intent on gaining respectability”.The experiences of Trump, recently defeated Orban, Le Pen herself in previous presidential elections, and other far-right populists like Germany’s AfD, suggest that there is perhaps a ceiling to the populist vote. Both Farage and Le Pen may be close to hitting it already.