Marine Le Pen looks unstoppable

Overlook for the moment the shenanigans surrounding French prime minister Michel Barnier’s attempt to cobble together a new government. One political crisis can conceal another. And a more existential spectre is haunting Paris. Its name is Marine Le Pen. Amidst the chaos, the weakened president and the hapless efforts to form a government, the leader of the National Rally seems to be the only winner.

In Paris’s smartest arrondissements, inhabited by the political and media blob who have run everything in France since forever, the unthinkable has become the plausible. The national political nervous breakdown, precipitated by president Emmanuel Macron, has put the barbarian at the gate. Oh la vache.

True, Marine Le Pen is not exactly a plouc, a bumpkin. She grew up in the smart Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. She is a graduate of Panthéon-Assas, a top law school, but is not a diplome of the École National d’Administration, where much of France’s elite was educated.