French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s right-hand man stormed out of the party yesterday as tensions over the National Front (FN)’s election defeats this year burst into the open.
Florian Philippot, architect of the National Front’s pledge to quit the euro and detoxify its brand, announced his departure after Le Pen bowed to pressure to push him towards the exit.
“Listen, I don’t like being ridiculed, I’ve never liked having nothing to do, so sure, I’m quitting the National Front,” the 35-year-old, one of two party vice-presidents since 2012, told France 2 television.
Like other big parties, the National Front (FN) was thrust into soul-searching after May’s battle for the presidency and June’s parliamentary elections brought centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron and his Republic On the Move (LREM) to power.
Philippot said that the debate within the National Front about shifting away from his focus on economic nationalism back to its traditional priorities of immigration and French identity were “a terrible backward slide”.
“I saw how things were developing negatively these past weeks, that maybe I wouldn’t have a place in the project,” he said.
Le Pen, who has attempted to bridge the divide between anti-immigration hardliners and leftist nationalists, said she was “not overjoyed about Florian leaving” but assured: “The Front will get over it, no problem.”
She said his accusations of a return to the extremism of the party’s beginnings under her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, “made absolutely no sense”.
Her partner Louis Aliot, an MP from southwest France, called Philippot “vain and arrogant” on Twitter.
Le Pen also sought to stamp out speculation about her future since her second failed presidential bid.
“I am the strongest and best placed” to represent the party in the next presidential election in 2022, she insisted.
The 49-year-old trained lawyer floundered in the final election debate with Macron in May, going on to win 33.9% of the vote in an election seen as a bellwether of support for populists in Europe.
The party also fared badly in June parliamentary elections, taking just eight seats out of 577.
The media-savvy Philippot, a former senior civil servant who was outed as gay by a gossip magazine, had been on a collision course with Le Pen since the polls.
His rivals blamed him for concocting a proposal to scrap the euro and bring back the franc, despite polls showing French voters running scared from the plan.
FN hardliners have seized on Le Pen’s defeat to try to refocus the party on its stock themes of immigration and security – issues that took a back seat to Europe and Islam while Philippot had Le Pen’s ear.
But Joel Gombin, political analyst at the Observatory of Political Radicalism, said that in Philippot Le Pen had lost “a great lightning rod”.
“Florian Philippot had the great advantage of attracting criticism from all those unhappy with the party line – which is to say, Marine Le Pen’s line,” the analyst said. “Now that he’s not there, she will have to defend herself and take the heat if necessary.”
Philippot had already begun charting his own path by creating his own Patriots association in May.
Accusing him of a conflict of interest, Le Pen on Wednesday stripped him of his responsibility for party strategy and communication, leaving him without a specific brief.
His departure is expected to accelerate the battle for ideological control of the FN.
Economist Philippe Murer, another Le Pen adviser, walked out after Philippot yesterday, complaining that hardliners were now calling the shots.
“The FN will talk mostly about mass immigration, a real problem for France, but it will not propose a real programme to defend the middle and lower classes,” he wrote on Twitter.
Emmanuel Macron’s rapid rise to power upended France’s political landscape, leaving traditional parties in disarray.
The Socialist Party and the centre-right Republicans – both of which lost voters and politicians to Macron – are also struggling to regroup.
This picture taken on February 5 shows Philippot and Le Pen.
