Marine Le Pen and the Coming French Revolution

By Matthew Parish

Friday 4 September 2026

There is a peculiar feature of French presidential elections. They have a habit of appearing predictable until suddenly they are not.

In 2017 François Fillon seemed for a time the natural successor to François Hollande. Then came scandal, Emmanuel Macron and the destruction of the traditional party system. In 2022 the old Socialist and Gaullist parties were reduced almost to spectators as Macron and Marine Le Pen fought their second presidential duel. Now France approaches the presidential election of April and May 2027 with Macron constitutionally unable to stand again, the centre fragmented, the left divided and Le Pen preparing for her fourth attempt at the Élysée Palace. This time she might win.

That sentence would have sounded sensationalist a decade ago. It does not sound particularly sensationalist today. Le Pen is presently the front-runner and recent polling has placed her at approximately 34–36 per cent in the first round. One July Ifop poll even had her defeating every principal opponent tested in a hypothetical second round — including former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe by 54 to 46 per cent. Polls conducted this far from an election must be treated cautiously, but the important point is structural rather than numerical: Le Pen is no longer merely capable of reaching the second round. There are now perfectly plausible electoral configurations in which she wins it.

That would represent one of the most important political events in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Long March to Respectability

Marine Le Pen’s greatest political achievement has not been increasing the vote of the National Rally. It has been changing what voting for the National Rally means. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, reached the second round of the presidential election in 2002. The result produced something close to national panic. Jacques Chirac defeated him by more than 82 per cent to 18 per cent because almost the entire French political establishment united against the Front National. That front républicain has progressively collapsed.

Marine Le Pen spent years pursuing what the French call dédiabolisation — the de-demonisation of the party. The National Front became the National Rally. Her father was expelled. The most inflammatory rhetoric was moderated. Plans for abandoning the euro were discarded. Younger and more polished politicians, above all Jordan Bardella, were promoted.

Meanwhile something even more important happened. The rest of French politics moved towards Le Pen on some of the questions upon which she had built her career. Immigration became a mainstream political preoccupation. So did Islamism, crime, border control, national identity and dissatisfaction with European regulation. Positions that once caused the National Front to be excluded from polite political conversation increasingly became subjects of ordinary television debate.

Le Pen did not entirely move into the French political mainstream. The French political mainstream moved partly towards Le Pen. The growth of sympathetic or congenial media environments has accelerated this process. CNews, now France’s most-watched 24-hour news channel, has given substantially greater prominence to themes concerning immigration, insecurity and national decline that overlap with the National Rally’s political agenda.

There is also widespread exhaustion with Macronism. France is entering the election amid economic anxiety, formidable public debt, dissatisfaction with public services and an unusually profound pessimism about the country’s direction. The proposition that Le Pen must be stopped at all costs therefore carries considerably less force than it did even five years ago.

The Courtroom Problem

There remains an extraordinary complication. Le Pen was convicted over the misuse of European Parliament funds. The Paris Court of Appeal upheld her conviction in July 2026 but substantially reduced the penalties imposed at first instance. Most importantly for French politics, the revised period of electoral ineligibility means that she can stand in 2027. She immediately announced that she would do so.

She has nevertheless appealed further to the Cour de Cassation. The legal position therefore remains unusual and potentially complicated. A further judicial decision is expected before the election and questions could conceivably arise about the consequences of a cassation and retrial. Yet the practical political position as matters presently stand is straightforward: Le Pen is campaigning for the presidency and is entitled to do so.

The conviction undoubtedly hurts her. A July Elabe poll found that 59 per cent of respondents thought she should not run and 70 per cent did not believe her assertions of innocence. Yet 74 per cent nevertheless agreed with the proposition that the French people should be free to choose their President. That distinction is politically important. A voter need not believe Le Pen innocent to vote for her.

Can She Actually Win?

The obstacles remain substantial. The French presidential system has traditionally contained a powerful anti-extremist mechanism. A candidate needs only a plurality to enter the second round but thereafter needs an absolute majority. Millions of voters who dislike one another therefore find themselves temporarily united against the candidate they dislike still more. That defeated Marine Le Pen in both 2017 and 2022. But each repetition has weakened the mechanism.

The decisive question in 2027 may therefore be the identity of the person standing opposite her. Against a relatively moderate centre-right candidate such as Édouard Philippe, the election might be extremely close. Against a polarising figure from the radical left, particularly Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Le Pen might become the beneficiary rather than the victim of tactical voting. The extraordinary possibility arises that conservative and centrist voters who once constituted the front républicain against the Le Pens could vote for Marine Le Pen to keep Mélenchon from the presidency. The geometry of French politics has turned upside down.

There is another advantage for Le Pen. Macron has no obvious heir. Philippe, Gabriel Attal and others compete for broadly overlapping portions of the electorate. The traditional Republicans remain weakened. The left is divided between social democrats, Greens and the much more confrontational politics of La France Insoumise. Le Pen, by contrast, has an identifiable electoral bloc that has survived election after election.

Hence the most reasonable assessment today is not that Marine Le Pen will become the next President of France. Presidential elections remain far too unpredictable for that. It is that she has a serious and perhaps unprecedented chance of doing so. And Europe must therefore contemplate what President Le Pen would mean.

Frexit Without Leaving

The first misconception should be discarded immediately. Le Pen is unlikely to take France out of the European Union. She learned from the 2017 campaign that threatening the euro frightened precisely the older and economically cautious voters she needed to win. The National Rally has consequently abandoned explicit withdrawal from either the euro or the European Union.

Its contemporary philosophy is more subtle — and potentially more disruptive. France would remain inside the European Union while asserting the primacy of French sovereignty against it. The National Rally favours national control over immigration, restored border controls, restrictions inconsistent with existing understandings of European free movement, preferential treatment for French citizens in areas including welfare and employment and the assertion of French law over European rules in selected fields.

This might be described as the Orbánisation rather than the Brexitisation of France.

Britain left the European Union because it did not want to obey its rules. Le Pen’s France would remain within the European Union while repeatedly challenging whether those rules should bind France at all. For Brussels this could be much worse. Britain was always semi-detached from European integration. France is one of its architects.

The Franco-German Engine

Virtually every great European integration project has depended upon an accommodation between Paris and Berlin. France supplied political ambition and military power. Germany supplied economic strength and financial credibility. The compromises struck between them subsequently became European policy. A Le Pen presidency could disable this mechanism.

Germany might discover that the French President no longer regarded further integration as desirable. Disputes would emerge over migration, fiscal policy, environmental regulation, trade and the powers of European institutions.

France could increasingly align itself on particular questions with governments favouring a Europe of sovereign nations rather than an ever closer union. This would not necessarily create a coherent nationalist bloc. Europe’s national conservatives disagree amongst themselves about Russia, economics, America and indeed one another. But it could make European agreement dramatically more difficult. Recent analysis by the European Council on Foreign Relations accordingly anticipates major disputes under a Le Pen presidency concerning Russia, enlargement, climate policy and migration.

The irony would be exquisite. The European Union might discover that France was too important to discipline.

Ukraine

For Ukraine, the consequences could be particularly serious. Le Pen has travelled a long political journey in relation to Russia. Her party’s historical connections with Moscow and her earlier admiration for Vladimir Putin remain sources of suspicion throughout Eastern Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the National Rally to distance itself substantially from Moscow.

Yet Le Pen’s instincts remain different from those of Macron. Macron increasingly conceived France as the political and military leader of a Europe obliged to confront Russian expansionism. A Le Pen presidency would be considerably more reluctant to allow France to become strategically committed to an indefinite confrontation with Russia. That difference would matter enormously because France is not merely another European state. She possesses nuclear weapons, a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, expeditionary military forces and one of Europe’s largest defence industries.

A France reluctant to underwrite Ukraine would fundamentally alter the European balance.

Ukraine’s prospective membership of the European Union might become particularly contentious. Enlargement requires political unanimity at critical stages. A French President sceptical of enlargement could therefore possess an effective veto. The result might be an extraordinary geopolitical realignment in which Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, Germany and potentially Britain became the principal European coalition committed to containing Russia, while France adopted a more detached conception of continental equilibrium.

NATO

Le Pen has also revived an old Gaullist idea. In May 2026 she reiterated that France should remain a member of NATO but withdraw from its integrated military command. Charles de Gaulle did essentially the same thing in 1966. Nicolas Sarkozy reversed the policy in 2009. The symbolism would nevertheless be radically different today.

De Gaulle withdrew from NATO’s integrated structures while the United States remained overwhelmingly committed to European defence. President Le Pen might do so precisely when Europeans are questioning the reliability and permanence of the American security guarantee. France is Europe’s only nuclear power inside the European Union. Macron has spent considerable political capital exploring whether the French nuclear deterrent might acquire a broader European dimension.

A Le Pen presidency would be far more likely to insist that the force de frappe exists for France. Eastern Europe would notice. So would Moscow.

The Return of the Nation-State

Yet it would be mistaken to interpret a Le Pen victory simply as a French surrender to Russia or an attempt to destroy Europe. Something more intellectually interesting would be happening. France would be proposing an alternative theory of Europe. The European Union has always contained a fundamental ambiguity. Is it an association of sovereign states cooperating for mutual advantage? Or is it an embryonic political entity progressively acquiring sovereign characteristics of its own?

For decades the answer was deliberately left obscure. Le Pen would try to answer the question. She would say that Europe consists of nations. European institutions may coordinate those nations. They may facilitate trade. They may cooperate on borders, defence and industrial policy. But ultimate political legitimacy resides in Paris, Warsaw, Rome and Budapest — not Brussels.

That argument has constituencies far beyond France. A Le Pen presidency could therefore become the catalyst for a broader ideological struggle over what the European Union actually is.

President Le Pen

There is nevertheless an enormous difference between winning an election and governing France. The French President is powerful but not omnipotent. Much would depend upon the subsequent legislative elections and whether the National Rally obtained a parliamentary majority. President Le Pen with Prime Minister Jordan Bardella and an RN majority in the National Assembly would possess extraordinary political authority.

President Le Pen facing a hostile Assembly would be another matter altogether. France could enter a period of institutional warfare involving referendums, constitutional litigation, confrontation with the European Commission, street demonstrations and repeated disputes over presidential and parliamentary competence. Financial markets would impose constraints of their own.

France carries enormous public debt. A government perceived as embarking upon an uncontrolled fiscal experiment or existential confrontation with European institutions could rapidly encounter higher borrowing costs. Whatever Le Pen’s ideological ambitions, the bond markets might prove more effective opponents than the European Commission. The National Rally would also encounter the oldest problem suffered by every populist movement upon achieving power. It would become responsible for reality.

Immigration would not suddenly disappear. Public spending could not simultaneously increase while taxes fell dramatically. European rules could not simply be ignored without consequences. Russia would remain dangerous. America would remain unpredictable. Germany would remain indispensable. Protest politics would have to become government.

France Changes Europe

Yet even a chaotic Le Pen presidency would transform European politics. For seventy years the central assumption of European integration has been that France ultimately wants the European project to succeed.

French governments might complain about Brussels. They might obstruct agreements, demand agricultural subsidies, protect French industries and insist upon French strategic autonomy. But nobody seriously doubted that Paris considered European integration part of France’s historic mission. Under Marine Le Pen that assumption would disappear.

Europe would continue. The euro would continue. The European Commission would continue issuing regulations and the European Parliament would continue sitting in Brussels and Strasbourg. But something fundamental would have changed.

The European Union would have lost France as the unquestioned guardian of the idea of ever closer union. And perhaps that is why the 2027 French presidential election matters so much more than the question of whether Marine Le Pen herself finally reaches the Élysée Palace. She has already demonstrated something remarkable. A political tradition that was once treated as beyond the boundaries of respectable French politics has moved to the centre of the national conversation. The daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen no longer needs an electoral earthquake to become President. She needs a few percentage points.

If she obtains them, Europe will not collapse the following morning. There will be no Frexit. NATO will not disappear. The European Union’s blue flags will continue flying outside French government buildings. Instead something slower and more consequential may begin.

Europe’s second-largest economy, its only nuclear-armed EU member and one of the two states upon which the entire architecture of European integration was constructed may start asking whether that architecture has gone too far.

The European Union has survived the sovereign debt crisis, Brexit, Donald Trump, the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its next great test may come not from a country trying to leave it. It may come from France deciding to remain — and trying to change what Europe means.