Marine Le Pen looked like she did not see it coming. The frontrunner for the 2027 presidential race has been ruled ineligible by the Parquet National Financier for using her European Parliamentary assistants to work for the then Front National back in France. Worse still, the court’s use of “provisional execution” for the five-year ban means that her ineligibility will remain in effect even while she appeals the decision.

While there is technically a way for Le Pen to appeal the ruling and run in 2027, the path is incredibly narrow. This means that, short of a remarkable turnaround, the Rassemblement National (RN) will have to field Jordan Bardella, the popular president of the party and Le Pen’s lieutenant.

Bardella, who is still just 29, would be the first non-Le Pen leader of the RN. He would serve as a clean slate onto which many could project their political fantasies, not unlike Emmanuel Macron in 2017. In many ways, Bardella is the poster child of this new detoxified, normalised catch-all party: the son of working-class parents, without the family baggage of his mentor. Following yesterday’s ruling, polls show him to be the favourite for the presidency in two years’ time.

But in a highly hierarchical party, the crowning of such a young candidate could create internal turmoil and give space to outsiders. The popular TV presenter Cyril Hanouna is apparently mulling a Beppe Grillo-style candidacy, while Bruno Retailleau and Éric Zemmour remain potential rivals on the conservative and nationalist lanes of French politics, respectively.

Among centrists, the ruling is a mixed blessing. It puts sitting Prime Minister François Bayrou in an awkward situation as, last year, he escaped being condemned in a nearly identical case of misuse of European Parliamentary assistants. The judgment has also upended the presidential path of several centrist hopefuls, who saw a run-off against Le Pen as their best ticket to the Élysée Palace.

Even beyond the 2027 election, this ruling puts French democracy in an uncomfortable spot. On the one hand, the growing defiance of the electorate towards its political class has prompted laws — voted on by the sovereign representatives of the people — such as the one which kneecapped Le Pen’s presidential ambitions. In an ironic twist, this defiance of a corrupt political class had long been pushed by the RN and its “head high, clean hands” approach to politics which led Le Pen to call for politicians to become ineligible over embezzlement cases.

On the other hand, the removal of the clear frontrunner, the main opponent to the sitting president, constitutes a serious affront to the sovereignty of the people. This is especially true when the ruling curtails her ability to effectively appeal her ineligibility, a decision that has been criticised by the former secretary general of France’s Constitutional Council as an excessive power grab which threatens the electoral freedom of the French people.

At present, the constitutive parts of liberal democracy are at odds with the rule of law pitted against the electoral and democratic expression of the people. It’s an old French concern. In his waning years, Former French president François Mitterrand warned his ministers: “Beware of the judges. They killed the monarchy; they will kill the Republic.” For all the machinations ahead of 2027, the ruling could foster a lingering anger which is altogether more substantial. That anger, in turn, might unexpectedly erupt in the years to come.

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François Valentin is a political analyst and co-host of the Uncommon Decency podcast.

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