LONDON — In a strange twist, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage, two giant figures of Europe’s populist right, faced simultaneous reckonings with what they like to call “the establishment” this week.
Le Pen, the standard-bearer of France’s National Rally party, was found guilty of embezzling EU funds at an appeal hearing on Tuesday afternoon and was ordered to wear an electronic tag on her ankle for a year.
An hour later, Brexit cheerleader Farage, whose Reform UK party is topping British opinion polls, resigned as a member of parliament amid intensifying political and media scrutiny over his own financial arrangements and his friendship with a convicted criminal.
But instead of departing the scene in shame — as conventional politicians might — both Le Pen and Farage instead pivoted to full-on election mode.
“Farage and Le Pen are two sides of the same coin,” Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, a member of parliament from President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renaissance party, told POLITICO. “It’s the same ideology. It’s clearly the same political agenda.”
“There are enormous similarities — in the way they do politics, in denouncing the system of which they’ve both been part for a long time … and in undermining institutions and pitting citizens against the democratic system,” he added.
A few hours after her verdict, Le Pen launched her campaign for next year’s French presidential contest, while Farage challenged his critics to beat him in a special election in his constituency, to let the people decide if he had done anything wrong.
Central to both their strategies is the populist playbook dramatically deployed by U.S. President Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. election: Deny all wrongdoing, blame a corrupt establishment conspiracy against them and their voters, and hope the electorate agrees.
It worked for Trump, whose polling improved after he was dragged to court, and he then won the subsequent election, becoming the first convicted felon to be elevated to the White House.
But will it work in Europe too?
The question is not academic: France will choose a new president in just 10 months, with Le Pen narrowly ahead of potential rivals in many national polls. In the U.K., too, Farage’s movement is on track to become the largest force in parliament, which would make him the favorite to become prime minister.
One powerful feature of populist campaigns in both the U.S. and Europe is this framing of their candidate or cause as on the side of “the people,” against a corrupt and self-serving elite. That was how the Brexit debate in the U.K. played out a decade ago, thanks in part to Farage’s rhetoric. And it was vividly on display in London and Paris again in recent days.
Danny Kruger, who is leading Reform UK’s preparation for government, said Farage had decided he’d “had enough” of the establishment’s “operation” to damage him on personal issues.
“This is in the context of a clear strategy by our political opponents, which I’m afraid to say include most of the mainstream media,” he told POLITICO’s Playbook Live event in London.
Kruger claimed “the government and its allies in the media and the other political parties” were working to stack the system against Farage’s party by canceling elections and changing the rules to stop it from winning power.
“Nigel has decided, I think rightly, that that’s not acceptable, and what needs to happen now is that his voters — the people who should ultimately decide whether he has a place in politics — should have the chance to send a clear signal that they still believe in him,” added Kruger.
In France, Le Pen has long framed her legal travails as an attack by the country’s establishment. “Judges have implemented practices that were thought to be the preserve of authoritarian regimes,” she said after a court first sentenced her to a five-year election ban last year.
She softened her anti-establishment stance after this week’s verdict, which reduced her sentence despite confirming her guilt and enabled her to stand in next year’s election. Le Pen also announced she would appeal again, this time to France’s highest court, meaning she won’t have to wear an ankle tag until a final verdict is decided.
Matthias Renault, a member of parliament for the National Rally, rejected the “Trumpian” narrative, saying Le Pen was merely exercising her rights to exhaust all legal avenues. “If appealing a decision is Trumpian then there is no rule of law any more,” said Renault.
One poll suggested Le Pen’s strategy seems to be working, giving her a significant lead against the politician widely seen as her most serious centrist rival for the first time. A survey by French polling firm Ifop, conducted after the latest court verdict, showed Le Pen beating center-right former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe in the runoff round of voting for the presidency by 54 percent to his 46 percent.
Recent elections across Europe and in the U.S. offer plenty of evidence that many voters feel the established political system is failing them, as the cost of living rises and inequality becomes more entrenched. In some cases, this extends to a sense that the state is rigged against the interests of millions of ordinary people, fueling populism and an anti-incumbent backlash.
Stijn van Kessel, a professor of comparative politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the narrative that Trump, Le Pen and Farage promote establishment conspiracies is so powerful because millions of voters in France and the U.K. feel like they have been conspired against too.
Van Kessel said it wasn’t clear whether Farage and Le Pen would be able to use their troubles to invigorate their voting bases or suffer electorally.
“Politicians such as Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen have been able to fuel and tap into anti-immigration sentiments as well as this voter distrust,” he said. “There are various structural reasons for that — such as inequality, people not seeing their lives improving, and the fear that their national identity is being eroded — and these politicians have been very successful at winning support on that basis.”
Research has found a link between the decline in standards of public services across Western European countries and rising support for the far right, driving the narrative that immigration is partly behind the pressures voters feel in their lives, said van Kessel. “People have been feeling that politicians have not been listening to their concerns.”
One risk for Farage, however, is that his gamble of calling a snap election backfires in another way. Farage vowed to fight his opponents in the special election in Clacton, England and prove that voters believe him — not them. But the other major parties have dismissed his gambit as a “stunt,” a “sham” and a “fake” contest, announcing they will not even bother to put up candidates to fight him. That would render the contest potentially meaningless — and it could get even worse.
The one candidate who has already declared he will take on Farage is the satirical candidate known as Count Binface, who is widely known to television audiences in the U.K. for standing in the constituencies of sitting prime ministers.
With his black cape and a silver trash can covering his head, Binface cuts a peculiarly British comic figure, reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch. But how many votes will he receive if he’s the only prominent opponent facing Farage? Could becoming the butt of a Count Binface joke inflict more damage on the Reform UK leader than the political establishment has managed in two decades?
“I am hesitant to say that this will be the end of Farage if the election turns out to be a joke,” said van Kessel. Le Pen and her National Rally party should not be written off either, he noted. “Support for far-right parties doesn’t just go away if politicians have a bad day.”
Farage and Le Pen try Trump’s trick of turning scandal to their advantage
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