Will Marine Le Pen's conviction embolden the Far Right?
The News Agents
Global
4.2 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The French Far Right leader Marine Le Pen is barred from standing in the country's next presidential election following her conviction for embezzlement. She’s beginning an emergency appeal straight away, and her party says “democracy has been executed“ in France today. Will that conviction silence them? Or could it be a rocket boost to their electoral fortunes?
Plus, we have an exclusive interview with International barrister Philippe Sands on what happens when the law and politics clash, why Trump may cancel the next elections - and his new book '38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia'.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.0 | This is a global player original podcast. The response of Marine Le Pen's supporters is exactly the same as the response of Adolf Hitler's supporters in 1931 or Donald Trump's supporters in 2023. |
| 0:24.1 | Just to be clear, I'm not drawing yet direct analogies between all of those characters, |
| 0:28.3 | but it's the fact of a powerful person using the law to create a sense of victimhood |
| 0:36.5 | and enhance their political power is tried and tested and |
| 0:41.1 | very successful. That's the international criminal barrister Philippe Sands talking about |
| 0:45.7 | Marine Le Pen's conviction and what it could mean for her political future. The French far-right |
| 0:50.7 | leader has been handed a four-year sentence from embezzlement. |
| 0:59.7 | Crucially, she's now barred from running for public office for five years, which means she can't stand in the French presidential elections in 2007. So is this the end of Le Pen's political career, |
| 1:06.4 | or is it the beginning of the French far right in power? |
| 1:12.2 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:16.2 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:21.2 | It's Emily, and it is a monumental day in French politics, |
| 1:24.8 | and for populist politics and voters around the world. |
| 1:27.3 | I don't think that we can overstate this, because at around 10 a.m. |
| 1:28.9 | this morning, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassamplement Nacional, France's far-right party, |
| 1:35.2 | was found guilty in a French court of embezzlement of four million euros. She and some eight |
| 1:40.9 | deputies were convicted of financing her own party using EU funds. |
| 1:45.8 | Now, at this point, her political future was hanging in the balance. |
| 1:50.0 | She waited to hear if she'd be barred from public office. |
| 1:53.2 | It took judges another 90 minutes or so to reveal their sentence. |
| 1:58.4 | And when it came, it shocked. |
... |
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