Paris —
Let the people decide. That was the defiant message from two of the world’s most famous populists on Tuesday, when Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen announced within hours of each other that they were willing to defy their own country’s norms to get the same opinion before the same jury, as mainstream politics in France and Britain currently hang in the balance.
In France, Marine Le Pen announced her defiant fourth presidential bid on the evening news, just hours after a court said she was legally able to do so.
At a sweltering court in central Paris, journalists were packed into a packed room just after lunch to hear the ruling on Le Pen’s appeal against a 2025 criminal conviction in which she, her far-right National Movement Party and 11 of its leaders were found guilty of embezzling millions of euros worth of European funds to pay the salaries of French party political staff.
On Tuesday, her ban was reduced, but her conviction and sentence remained. That means Le Pen still faces a year of home detention under the electronic tag, a condition that would make it impossible for her to campaign as she had previously vowed to do.
And yet, that night, this woman who has spent her life fighting, first to wrest control of the party founded by her father and then to sanitize it, declared that she would keep fighting. She has announced that she is not only running, but that she believes a new appeal to France’s highest court will exonerate her, and that the people will be her only jury.
Across the Channel, Nigel Farage has just made a similar appeal to the nation. The founder of the populist far-right Reform Britain party, which, like Le Pen’s National Rally, is topping national opinion polls, announced she would resign from parliament in a dramatic speech expressing anger at what she called “establishment blows” against her.
After accepting credit for Britain’s departure from the European Union, known as Brexit, he revealed he intended to turn the by-election that triggered his resignation in the seat of Clacton into a new referendum, this time against officials currently investigating his finances.
The move suspended a parliamentary inquiry into an undeclared £5 million ($6.7 million) gift that the Guardian reported Mr Farage received from a Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire, and a stipend that the Sunday Times reported he received from a man convicted of fraud in the US. Mr Farage denied any wrongdoing on Tuesday, insisting he had “not broken any laws in any way”.
At about the same time, in different languages and in very different political contexts, Le Pen and Farage announced moves that made it clear they wanted to overturn the system rather than contain it.
Le Pen’s television appearances and new election posters depicting her with arms outstretched in victory certainly suggest that she believes she can now turn the legal issues in her favor.
Since losing to President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 with 41% of the vote, Europe’s far-right grandma has been planning a presidential run in 2027, even ceding leadership of the National Rally to her protégé Jordan Bardella to focus on the only prize that really matters to her.
Mr. Bardera was successful, leading his party to its first national victory in the 2024 European elections, and coming in first place in the first round of the snap parliamentary elections that followed. Her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, once dismissed as unelectable, is now the single largest party in parliament and, according to opinion polls, the frontrunner for the presidential nomination.
That is why the ban on her candidacy in March 2025 thundered. What she saw as a steady march to power was frozen. At a rally shortly afterward, she called the ruling a political verdict masquerading as a legal one, a “witch hunt” in her words, and an affront to democracy itself. She said she has fought against injustice for 30 years and does not want to be removed from office now.
US President Donald Trump posted “FREE MARINE LE PEN” on Truth Social from Washington, denouncing the ruling as a “legal act” against a political opponent. The Kremlin, Elon Musk and then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán echoed the same message: the people, not the courts, should choose.
Le Pen made it clear on Tuesday night that she did not believe she would campaign under house arrest or wear an electronic ankle tag, but that the system could no longer stop her anyway. Her new appeals are not likely to be resolved until next year, but by then she hopes to be close enough to the door of power that the entire judicial saga will resemble more the political witch hunt she has thrown than an independent decision.
Just as President Trump contested the 2024 election with his own legal challenges, Le Pen is now the favorite to enter the Elysée Avenue under a judicial cloud that could be quickly dispelled by presidential immunity if she wins power.
Trump not only provided strategy, but has been a vocal advocate and staunch defender of Farage and Le Pen’s political careers since returning to the White House. On Monday, he amplified a post harshly criticizing Mr Farage for re-running his 2024 “anti-Trump strategy”.
In Mr Farage’s case, Britain’s mainstream political parties are fending off his challenge by refusing to field candidates against him in Clacton. That means Mr Farage’s only challenger is likely to be Count Binface, a persona created by comedians aimed at making fun of prominent election candidates. Mr Farage will be hoping that his return to parliament largely unopposed in a by-election will give him a new mandate and an image of him as a citizen who can stand up to an ever more Teflon-coated regime. But if he is re-elected, the investigation could be reopened, and the comedic aspect of the fight risks backfiring.
This is one script in two languages. The accused were recast as victims and the law as a weakening weapon for a frightened regime. According to this script, a vote represents absolution, and neither France nor Britain has built a system to respond to that.
In both cases, politicians appeal to the people beyond the heads of institutions and use the appeal itself as evidence of their own persecution. That’s the trap that struck two countries simultaneously on Tuesday. It is the perfect populist strategy, and a trap that neither France nor Britain seems able to contain.
