Time to think the unthinkable about President Le Pen | Timothy Garton Ash

Logic is against Marine Le Pen, as it was with Trump and Brexit. No wonder people are weighing up the possible repercussions

Could President Marine Le Pen trigger article 50 without a parliamentary vote? Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, that is, to take France out of the European Union, following Britain. Such is the question I find myself discussing in Paris with leading French experts. Provisional conclusion: since France, unlike Britain, is a presidential democracy, she could probably do it herself initially, but it would then require parliament to vote a revision of the French constitution. The mere fact that my French friends raise the question, even very hypothetically and three-quarters-jokingly, is a sign of the times. What was it Rousseau said? “To be sane in a world of madmen is in itself a kind of madness.”

Related: François Fillon is as big a threat to liberal values as Marine Le Pen | Natalie Nougayrède

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