Founder of French far-right party risks expulsion at hearing

The release of the results of the postal ballot, held earlier this month, marked the latest salvo in a bitter and public feud between the 87-year-old FN founder and his daughter Marine, who now runs the party and is seeking to oust her firebrand father.

“Jean-Marie Le Pen kicked off a process of which he knew the outcome by multiplying mistakes over many weeks, which could only lead to this kind of decision”, Marine said in a statement after the decision was announced.

“I expressed the wish that this episode be a stage towards an effective reunification of the National Front”.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has been expelled from the National Front party he founded after complaints about comments he made that belittled the significance of the Holocaust.

Apprised of the decision, Le Pen reverted to his feisty nature.

“The members of the executive bureau owe their mandates as members of parliament or European Parliament, in large part, to the action of Jean-Marie Le Pen over decades”, he told Europe 1 radio.

While Marine Le Pen signed off on the complaints, she was not present at the high-stakes meeting. Philippot was also absent. But Philippot said in an interview with the daily L’Opinion that they prefer not to be both judges and accusers in what amounts to a trial.

Marine Le Pen, her sights on France’s 2017 presidential race, has worked to clean up the image of the anti-immigrant party.

He contends his daughter is changing the National Front’s identity in her bid to offer a political alternative to the French – and doing so with the help of Philippot whose stack of degrees adds special weight to his policies.

He has called the Nazi use of gas chambers during World War II a mere “detail” of history and insisted that France’s collaborationist wartime leader, Philippe Pétain, later convicted of treason, is not a traitor.

Mr Le Pen, who was honorary president, was dismissed after a three-hour extraordinary party congress.

His dismissal follows a series of remarks regarded as inflammatory and a feud with his daughter.

But the elder Le Pen’s suspension was later cancelled by a court, which found it “violated statutory rules” by not specifying it was a temporary measure pending a disciplinary procedure.

But Jean-Marie Le Pen has been an awkward reminder of the party’s roots – a “parasite” on the party, in the words of Philippot – when it should be focusing on regional elections in December.

Le Pen ally Bruno Gollnisch, not an executive board member, was one of the few National Front bigwigs to defend the patriarch.