Marine le Penn is the leader of the French National Front. Whatever exalted title they give their neo-nazi party these days, it’s the ‘national front’. But written in French. Obviously.

Whilst engaged as a member of the European Parliament (where failed politicians tend to end up) she basically stole money from the EU to fund her political party. Which, funny enough, is not allowed. Even though the EU parliament is widely viewed as a Free at the point of service, unlimited cash dispenser, there are a few rules in place, which generally, they don’t enforce. Because the EU take such a vast amount of money from its member states, it can’t waste time ‘counting the change’, it has 32,000 useless, unproductive free-loaders to do… errrr… whatever they do. Probably working from home, mostly. And the EU also allows its members an allowance of up to 30,000 Euros a month for ‘staff’. As long as those ‘staff’ are doing stuff for the EU. Or anything vaguely European. So basically you can pay your wife 300 grand a year as long as she eats a croissant every day and has Spag. Bol. every week.

And Marine was taking this money and using it to fund her party. All political parties are short of money. Most get ‘sponsors’. ‘Donors’. But if your support base is, basically, a bunch of skinheads living on benefits, money is in short supply. So where better to find cash than from Brussels’ limitless supply.

The French court decided that Mdm Le Penn be removed from political party leadership for 5 years. A reasonable punishment? Well, the problem is (for Marine, not for anyone else, anyone decent) that she therefore cannot stand in the next presidential election. Which she is quite fancied to actually win. Unlike her poor, late fascist father, who lost every one he ever entered. And she’s now shouting that ‘the courts are politically motivated’, similar to what Trump shouted every time he was in court, but in French.

Unlike her father, a nasty, nazi, rabidly anti-semitic, racist bastard, Marine has toned down the party’s hard-rightism and adjusted the hate figures to, primarily, Muslims. Secondarily: Muslims. And thirdly…

Hard rightists need a scapegoat. For all society’s woes. And Muslims are a big force in France now, and are much easier to identify than Jews. They’re colour-coded. Even though a vast majority are French citizens and have been for generations in Senegal and Algeria and Morocco and all the other ex-colonies, Le Penn wants rid of them. Then she can start on the Jews.

Yes, Marine is a tragic loss to French politics. We’ll all miss her smiling face. Ok, I lied about the smiling.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx