France loves a battle-scarred survivor. Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac clawed their way back from political failure to become presidents of the republic. There is a significant chance that Marine Le Pen will be next.

Now that the Paris appeal court has unshackled her from an electoral ban for fraud, the far-right veteran has double appeal in the race for the French presidency next year. She will run, as always, as an outsider and a scourge of the political elites – despite continuously holding electoral office since 1998. She can also now pose as a “miraculous survivor”, a “mother courage” and “a battling granny”, as senior French political figures, including former ministers, described her to me during recent conversations in Paris.

Le Pen will be a much more formidable candidate than her young understudy Jordan Bardella might have been. The other candidates were wary of Bardella, but they did not fear him. They do fear a resurrected Le Pen.

Her party, the National Rally (RN), has a new campaign slogan: “Renaissance”. The rebirth of Le Pen’s political career, the party says, foretells the rebirth of France.

One might almost think Le Pen had been acquitted of fraud on 7 July. She was not. The judges essentially ruled that voters, not the courts, should decide who is president. They reduced Le Pen’s five-year ban from........

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