Jean-Marie Le Pen has just been burned – by his own daughter.
In a statement on the official website of France’s Front National, party leader Marine Le Pen has roundly denounced her father’s position in the party and declared she will stop him running for election this year.
Le Pen states that her father has gone into a “downward spiral”, instituting a terre brûlée [scorched earth] policy that she calls “political suicide”.
The statement asserts that despite being honorary president, Jean-Marie Le Pen cannot be allowed to hold the Front National “hostage”. Recent “gross provocations”, perceived as being aimed at his daughter, are a blow to “the whole movement, its frameworks, its candidates, its members, its voters”.
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Marine succeeded her father as FN leader in 2011, with the party subsequently winning 25 per cent of the vote in the 2014 European Elections.
It is with profound tristesse that she now plans to assemble an emergency executive board. This morning, she tweeted that she is “forced to protect” the party’s political interests.
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Contrainte de protéger au mieux les intérêts politiques du @FN_officiel, je réunirai rapidement un bureau exécutif : https://t.co/sOyhaPdXId
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) April 8, 2015
Jean-Marie Le Pen has recently caused a stir with his claim that the gas chambers used for racial genocide by the Nazis are “a detail of history” (making his daughter’s comments that there is “no Islamophobia in France” seem fairly benign by comparison).
After his daughter condemned such comments, Jean-Marie went full Greek tragedy, bemoaning in the press that “one is only ever betrayed by one’s own”.