It's a political attack' Far-right party tries to marshal support after Le Pen conviction

Near a chicken stand at a rural market, Jocelyn Dessigny was handing out leaflets bearing a photo of the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and the words "Save democracy!" "It is a political attack," he said of Le Pen's criminal conviction for embezzlement this week.

- Angelique Chrisafis

After a two-month trial, Le Pen was found guilty of organizing a system of fake job contracts to embezzle more than €4m (£3.4m) of European Parliament funds between 2004 and 2016. Judges placed an immediate ban on her taking part in elections for five years, sparking fury from Le Pen, who said they had in effect "excluded" her from the 2027 French presidential race.

"There's a sense of stupefaction," said Dessigny, 43, a member of Parliament for Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party in the Aisne department in northern France. The area, which has higher than average levels of unemployment and poverty, is an RN heartland that has contributed to some of the anti-immigration party's highest electoral scores in recent years.

Dessigny now finds himself hurriedly organizing car-shares to Paris where, tomorrow, Le Pen will hold an open-air protest rally to challenge what she called a "tyranny of judges" out to block her from a presidential race she says she could otherwise win.

Calling a protest rally in Paris is a departure for Le Pen, who for more than a decade has endeavoured to present her party as a mainstream operation that is fit to rule, rather than a repository for angry protest votes - even though opponents say RN's policy platform remains racist, xenophobic and anti-Islam.