Students of French history know that two conditions are necessary for the country to erupt: economic hardship and a loss of faith in its institutions. While there are fears that President Trump’s tariffs may contribute to fulfilling the first, the second is already ominously widespread.
When judges convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and banned her from standing for office this week voters in France already had limited faith in politics.
Judging by the mood in the Somme, a bellwether département of northeast France, the country’s divisions are only growing.
Here, President Macron’s home town of Amiens — which resoundingly supported the hard-left bloc in last year’s parliamentary elections — is surrounded by rural constituencies that voted for Le Pen’s populist right National Rally.
“She did what a string of others have done and it’s not good,” said Gaëtan de Fretin, 34, a pellet stove fitter loading his van in Poix-de-Picardie, a small town outside Amiens with red brick houses. “But the others are not stopped from standing in elections. Why is she?”
Few — not even Rally voters — seem convinced by Le Pen’s protestations of innocence but at the same time, many like de Fretin believe that her sentence was handed down not in the name of justice but with a view to eliminating her from the 2027 presidential election.
Le Pen and 23 other defendants linked to her party were found guilty by Paris criminal court of embezzling 2.9 million euros from the European parliament through a fake jobs scam that ran from 2004 to 2016.
She denounced what she called a “political ruling” that she said was designed to keep her out of the 2027 race. Her words were backed by President Trump, who, in a post on his Truth Social account, described the case as a “Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen” on Thursday night.
Echoing claims by JD Vance, the vice-president, that Europe was turning its back on democracy, Trump went on to claim that it was “another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison”. Judges have not chosen to send Le Pen to prison. Her term is to be served at home with an ankle bracelet and not until she has been given a chance to appeal.
“It is all so bad for France, and the Great French People, no matter what side they are on. FREE MARINE LE PEN!” Trump added.
In Poix-de-Picardie, the majority voted for the hard right in last year’s election and Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the local MP, is one of the Rally’s rising stars.
Jean-Claude, 78, a pensioner sitting in the central square said he shared many of Le Pen’s views. He fears an “Islamisation” of French society, for instance.
“I’ve got nothing against those people,” he added. “I know some and they are very nice, but we can’t keep letting so many in.”
Although his words echoed rally policy, he had little doubt that Le Pen had “made a mistake and it’s in the run of things that she should be punished.
“The trouble is that everyone should be punished the same way and they are not. The judgments are much harsher for people on the right. Just look at Nicolas Sarkozy,” he said in a reference to the former French president on trial for allegedly accepting €5 million in illegal campaign funding from Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s late dictator. Prosecutors have called for Sarkozy, who denies wrongdoing, to be jailed for seven years.
In its 152-page ruling on the Rally embezzlement case, the court insisted that politics had played no role in shaping its decision, and it was backed by senior prosecutors and judges outraged at claims that the judiciary could be anything but independent.
Less than 30 kilometres east, in the hard-left voting Amiens, Jacky Leroy, 62, a union delegate, was handing out brochures inviting passers-by to a protest to call for public spending rises that afternoon.
He, perhaps unsurprisingly, backs the courts. Le Pen and her co-defendants “took millions of euros”, he said, “they refused to recognise the facts and in those circumstances they could well start again. It’s perfectly reasonable not to let them stand for office.”
But Grégory, a floating voter who lays on horse-drawn tourist tours of Amiens, was not so sure.
“I find the judgment shocking,” he said as he and his two carthorses waited for customers outside the city’s cathedral. “They should have suspended her sentence until she appealed so that she could run in the election.”
He placed the court ruling in the context of what he believes to be consistent attempts to keep the Rally out of power, pointing notably to last year’s snap parliamentary elections. When the Rally came top in the first round, Macron’s centrists formed an alliance with the radical left to stop it winning the second. The strategy backfired and the Left emerged victorious in an unexpected and unpleasant surprise for the president. But he has nevertheless appointed a minority centrist government viewed as illegitimate by both the rally and the Left.
“A majority of French people voted for the extreme left or the extreme right because they wanted change,” Grégory said. “There were only a small number of centrist MPs elected, but we ended up with a centrist prime minister and nothing changed.”
The Rally launched a petition in support of Le Pen and announced a gathering in Paris on Sunday to “save democracy”.
There is no sense that voters in the Somme are about to take to the streets in support of Le Pen as they did during the yellow vest protests over fuel duty hikes in 2018. But the calm may be deceptive.
Martine Blanc, 61, who was sipping a coffee with Bernard, 62, her husband in the sunshine outside an Amiens cafe, capture the sense of apathy well: “I don’t bother to vote any more. The politicians have let me down. The country’s going to the dogs, insecurity is rising, there are knife crimes everywhere but they just defend their own interests.”
Back in Poix-de-Picardie, de Fretin the stove fitter agreed.
“Frankly, a lot of people have lost faith in politicians whether they are on the left or the right, or at the top or the bottom.
“If things carry on like this, we’ll end up with someone like Donald Trump.”
