I have done nothing wrong. Let the people decide. Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage had the same defiant response to, in her case, a criminal conviction and in his, an alleged breach of parliamentary financial disclosure rules: to sidestep the authorities by appealing directly to voters.
The French far-right leader and her UK counterpart are formidable, battle-hardened populist campaigners who have never been closer to taking power. But their ascent has been jeopardised by accusations of financial irregularities: Le Pen has been convicted of embezzling EU funds; Farage is facing a parliamentary standards investigation over his failure to declare a £5mn gift from a crypto billionaire. Their response was to submit themselves to an election.
It was a coincidence of timing, but hardly a surprise. Siding with the people against a supposedly self-serving political elite is the essence of populism. Donald Trump famously said in 2016 he could stand in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue “and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”. A popular mandate can be a literal or metaphorical get-out-of-jail-free card, as events in America have shown. Trump has made a political career fighting what he claims is judicial persecution, and has endangered American liberal democracy in the process. Le Pen and Farage are threatening to take their countries down the same perilous road.