Walking the streets of Henin-Beaumont, it doesn’t take long to see why the French Right-wing politician Marine Le Pen made this former mining town her political stronghold.
Shortly after the coal pits closed in the 1980s and 1990s, the textile factories followed, leaving thousands of its residents without jobs.
Mountainous slag heaps still surround this part of the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France; painful reminders of a once thriving industry, now lost for ever.
Even today, the unemployment rate is almost double the national average, while nearly a third of its population under the age of 30 is classed as being in financial ‘poverty’.
It is a place where grizzled men prop up the same bars each night, supping half-pints of the strong local beer, La Goudale. Disillusioned youngsters tear around town on mopeds or noisily rev the engines of their modified sports cars.
It is a place where, with jobs few and far between, the notion of ‘foreigners’ arriving and looking for work is a sore point.
In fact, Henin-Beaumont is similar to many working-class towns across the north of England where mines and factories closed thanks to globalisation, and jobs were outsourced to industrial titans such as China or India.
And like those towns, it was for decades a beacon of Left-wing idealism, with a socialist local government.
But just as the so-called ‘Red Wall’ constituencies in the Midlands and the north turned their back on the Labour Party in favour of the Tories or, now, Reform, the people of Henin-Beaumont decided they had had enough, voting in Marine Le Pen and her populist, anti-immigration Rassemblement National (National Rally) – formerly known as the National Front.
Le Pen, a former local councillor who has been the town’s MP since 2017, has never actually lived in the area but is said to be a regular sight at the twice-weekly market.
Last week, this community, and the rest of France, were left stunned after she was found guilty of the embezzlement of EU funds, sentenced to four years in prison (two of which will be suspended and the remaining two can be served wearing an electronic tag rather than in custody) and – the most heinous sentence, according to her supporters – barred from running for office for five years.
This, in effect, ended her hopes of winning the 2027 French presidential election, where she was surging ahead in opinion polls and has sparked National Rally claims of a judge-led political conspiracy to kill her chances of taking office.
‘The system has released a nuclear bomb and, if it is using such a powerful weapon against us, it is obviously because we are about to win the elections,’ Le Pen said in a news conference following the judgment, during which she compared herself to the late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, poisoned by Vladimir Putin’s thugs.
Her supporters have been buoyed by endorsements from populist leaders around the world, including Donald Trump, who, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social yesterday said: ‘The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison.’
He added: ‘Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me’. He ended with a rousing call in capital letters: ‘FREE MARINE LE PEN!’ This is of course despite the fact she hasn’t actually been sent to jail.
Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni and Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban also lent their support, while Trump’s self-proclaimed ‘First Buddy’, Elon Musk, waded in, claiming the ‘radical Left’ had ‘abused the legal system to jail their opponents’.
There could be further repercussions, with a rally scheduled to take place in Paris tomorrow as Le Pen’s supporters rail against an establishment they are being told has conned them.
But rather inconveniently, Le Pen herself has previously called for ‘lifelong ineligibility’ from running for office for anyone convicted of crimes while serving as a politician.
Party members defending her say that the embezzlement of around £4million of EU funds, on the pretence of paying European Parliament staff in Strasbourg and Brussels, was not for ‘personal enrichment’, as the judges agreed, but simply to help the cash-strapped party, with the money funnelled to National Rally staff in France.
Le Pen was personally found guilty of directly organising eight fictitious contracts worth about €474,000 – just over £400,000.
Surely, corruption is corruption? Yet there are now fears that the Paris courtroom’s tough sentence could backfire and serve only to embolden the hard-Right movement in France – particularly following the support of Trump et al.
‘It’s up to the French people to say who can or cannot be president, it’s not up to judges,’ Nicolas Corniak said as he walked through Henin-Beaumont’s town square wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap. ‘Even if you don’t like her [Le Pen’s] ideas, you need to leave the decisions to the people via the ballot box.’
In a bar on Place de la Republique, where the men try their luck at lottery scratchcards as they chat about football, 29-year-old shop worker Dylan Goubet, who has always voted for National Rally, said: ‘This sentence will change people, make them think differently about things. This will make people angry.
‘We have been waiting several years for her to be president. Le Pen is respected here. The way things work here suit people. It is good to know you are in a city that supports National Rally.’
Indeed, it would appear tensions are already running high. Judge Benedicte de Perthuis, the head of the three-judge panel which sentenced Le Pen, is said to be under police protection after her home address was shared online. She has also faced abuse on social media.
Even some of those who are not fans of Le Pen and her party’s strict anti-immigration stance have questioned the length of the sentence and the ban on her eligibility to stand in the election.
In December 2016, France passed a law, known as ‘Sapin 2’, which made a ban on running for office a matter of course for those sentenced in cases involving the embezzlement of public funds.
But it has rarely been invoked and Le Pen’s supporters point out that her conviction relates to activities that took place between 2004 and 2016, a period that pre-dates the legislation. ‘There are other politicians that have done worse than her, so why is she being punished so harshly?’ asks receptionist Deborah Debuisson, who votes for the socialist party.
‘A lot of people do think it’s because of the election. They [National Rally] haven’t been good for the area, we still have the same problems. But I was surprised at the sentence.’
The Communist Party’s headquarters is just a stone’s throw from Marine Le Pen’s office in the town centre but the dividing lines in Henin-Beaumont between those who have always voted socialist or communist and those who now align with the hard-Right are stark.
In the Cafe de la Paix, one man rails against what the party has done to the area.
‘It shouldn’t matter your nationality, where you are from,’ he said. ‘Black, brown, whatever. We are all friends here and we all work hard together.’
Hotel manager Youcef Khalef, who is originally from Algeria, like many in the community, hits out at Le Pen’s populist policies.
‘Le Pen wants to blame it all on immigration and sees it as the biggest problem in France,’ he said.
‘But there are plenty of other problems. She has been convicted of an offence. I don’t see how the sentence can be seen as political.’ On the main square, peeling National Rally posters bearing portraits of Le Pen and the party’s fresh-faced president, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, proclaim ‘Hope for France’.
Bardella is now seen as the frontrunner to be National Rally’s candidate for the 2027 presidential campaign in Le Pen’s absence.
A slick social media operator, with more than two million followers on TikTok, Bardella has been described as Le Pen’s ‘creation’ and appeals to a youthful demographic, regularly uploading photos of himself meeting ‘fans’ or kissing babies.
In a French TV interview on Thursday evening he remained defiant in the face of the ban. ‘Every day that passes brings us closer to power,’ he said.
Le Pen, 56, has already run unsuccessfully for the French presidency three times. She is the youngest daughter of former party leader and founder of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a far-Right firebrand who was accused of playing down the Holocaust and fined on numerous occasions for inciting hatred towards Muslims. He died in January, aged 96.
At Le Pen’s office in Henin-Beaumont, National Rally regional organiser Arnaud de Regne fielded questions on her behalf.
He attempted to defend his boss by repeating claims that her offences were not rooted in a desire for ‘personal enrichment’ but to aid the party.
Despite the fact that this still amounts to an illegal use of European taxpayers’ money, Mr de Regne describes her case as an ‘administrative disagreement’ with the European Parliament.
‘This judgement is really a political judgement to stop Mdme Le Pen being a candidate in the next election,’ he said.
He added that his boss was currently working on her appeal against the conviction.
Describing the backing of other populist leaders around the globe, he added: ‘It’s surprising. It’s always surprising when the American President wades in but when you see other democratic leaders in support you know there is a democratic problem.’
Mr de Regne was, however, quick to point out that the party was not relying on the endorsement of the Kremlin, after Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said that ‘Marine Le Pen’s situation constitutes a violation of democratic norms.’
He said: ‘We will speak loudly about this affair to say there is a real democratic problem with France. We are the country of human rights… the French Revolution. So how are we the country that stopped the favourite candidate at the presidential election?’
Like many within National Rally, Mr de Regne appeared relatively upbeat about the party’s chances going forward as he explained he had been helping organise tomorrow’s Paris demonstration.
Asked if he feared outbreaks of violence or scenes akin to the 2021 Capitol attack in Washington DC after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election amid false claims of ‘electoral fraud’, Mr de Regne said this was not what the party stood for but ‘there might be some people outside of our movement that come just to be violent’.
With the current French president Emmanuel Macron banned by the constitution from serving a third term in office, France will have a new president in two years’ time, regardless of Le Pen’s situation. If she is successful in her appeal, her dream of high office could still be realised.
The rest of Europe will undoubtedly be watching closely to see how much her Trumpian claims of an orchestrated Left-wing ‘conspiracy’ have actually cut through with wider voters across France.