Jean-Marie Le Pen: I’m ashamed that the president of the National Front has my name.
Marine Le Pen: I get the feeling that he can’t stand that the National Front continues to exist when he no longer heads it.
Reuters/AFP
Paris
National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has disowned his daughter and party leader Marine after she suspended him from the far-right French movement, saying that he hoped she would lose the 2017 presidential election.
The party’s executive committee, chaired by Marine Le Pen, suspended his membership late on Monday and said that it would strip him of his title of honorary chairman after he repeated his view that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of World War II.
While the party remains anti-EU and anti-immigration it has worked hard to soften its image since Marine Le Pen took over in 2011 and has seen its popularity soar, enjoying a series of election successes.
Several polls have shown she could pose a serious challenge to the conservative UMP and ruling Socialists in 2017 elections.
But her father’s refusal to tone back controversial remarks last month led to a bitter public dispute between the two.
The elder Le Pen repeated his view that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” of history and also claimed that France has to get along with Russia to save the “white world”.
The war of words between them escalated after his suspension, with the former paratrooper saying it would be “scandalous” if she were to become head of state.
“I’m ashamed that the president of the National Front has my name,” he said in an interview with Europe 1 radio yesterday.
The octogenarian accused his daughter of “betrayal”.
Asked if he wanted his daughter to win the 2017 election, Le Pen said: “For the moment, no.”
“If such moral principles should govern the French state, that would be scandalous,” he said in a radio interview.
He said his daughter was “a bit worse” than the mainstream parties in parliament “because an adversary fights you head on, here they are stabbing you in the back.”
Late on Monday, he had already suggested his daughter get married so as to change her family name.
“I hope she will drop it as soon as possible. She could do so by marrying her partner ... or someone else,” he said.
Opinion polls indicate that she could make it to the second round of the 2017 election but not win. There has been no clear poll evidence so far of an overall impact on her popularity with voters, or of the party as a whole.
Sciences Po university’s Pascal Perrineau said he did not expect the suspension and possible expulsion of Le Pen senior would lead to a break-up of the National Front (FN), as in 1998 when his long-time ally Bruno Megret broke off to form his own party.
His granddaughter, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, has also been drawn into the fight.
She told Le Figaro newspaper she had requested more time from the National Front to decide whether to represent them in the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur – her grandfather’s stronghold – in December regional elections as she did not want to be at the heart of the family conflict.
“A more neutral candidate could perhaps be preferable in the interest of the movement ... I have no wish to be taken hostage by Jean-Marie Le Pen, in particular,” she said.
Several senior National Front party members said Jean-Marie Le Pen’s reaction merely justified yesterday’s decision.
“Internal democracy functioned perfectly within the National Front and the decision is perfectly clear,” party treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just said on BFM TV.
A special meeting of FN members will be called within three months to decide whether to strip him of the title of honorary president and analysts say Marine may use the opportunity to change the name of the party for a complete break with its past.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s suspension has sparked divisions within the party but analysts said it was unlikely to create a real split.
Sylvain Crepon, an expert on the FN, said there was “affection” for Jean-Marie among party members but even those who were very attached to him “have long thought he goes a bit far”.
He said while Le Pen could still be a “media nuisance ... he risks isolating himself completely and ending looking like a rambling old man”.
The latest feud is not the first time the Le Pens have seen family conflict spill over into public territory.
In 1987, Jean-Marie’s wife Pierrette posed naked in Playboy to humiliate him in the middle of their divorce and a decade later he fell out politically with his second daughter Marie-Caroline, with whom he no longer has contact.
The relationship between Marine and her father has been particularly rocky in recent months.
Six months ago, she stormed out of her father’s house after his Doberman dog savaged her Bengal cat to death.
The recent spat was laid bare for all to see during the party’s traditional May 1 rally in Paris when the elder Le Pen – conspicuously dropped from a line-up of FN leaders on stage – strode uninvited onto the podium, grabbing the limelight as his daughter readied to make her speech.
“I think that was a malicious act, I think it was an act of contempt towards me,” Marine said on Sunday, adding: “I get the feeling that he can’t stand that the National Front continues to exist when he no longer heads it.”
