France’s National Front expels founder

National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen is to keep up his legal fight to stay in the French far-right party despite being excluded for a second time, keeping alive a family feud that has dogged his daughter’s campaign to become president of France.

Le Pen, who assumed control of the National Front in 2011, has already succeeded in putting a new face on the party, literally, by steadily replacing images of her father’s often snarling visage with photos of her smiling one.

The party’s leadership, including his daughter, Marine Le Pen, earlier this year had disassociated itself from Jean-Marie Le Pen after he belittled the significance of the Holocaust by calling the Nazi gas chambers a “detail of history”.

Ms Le Pen is believed to be considering a run for the French presidency in 2017 and wants to distance herself from her outspoken father, who has been convicted numerous times of racism and anti-Semitism.

But the ageing provocateur has shown little interest in going quietly, successfully challenging his suspension in court and barging onto the stage during a major FN rally in May.

He has already won three court battles with his daughter, who was forced to cancel a mail-in vote to remove her father’s title as the National Front’s honorary president for life. The party No. 2, Florian Philippot, is also expected to be absent.

The former Foreign Legionnaire’s inflammatory speeches had made him the figurehead of France’s far right since he co-founded the FN in 1972.

“The National Front can exist without Jean-Marie Le Pen, but it can’t exist in contradiction with all the positions he stands for”, Gollnisch told BFM-TV as he arrived at party headquarters in Nanterre, west of Paris.

“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”, she said in a statement.

Le Pen’s lawyer, Frederic Joachim, called the decision a “political assassination”.

Three hours later, Le Pen emerged sounding conciliatory.

That prompted Marine Le Pen to move against her father, fearing that the issue could threaten her party’s quest for mainstream power in France.

The party suffered sharp declines in the late 1990s after a messy split between Jean-Marie Le Pen, then its leader, and party number two Bruno Megret.

He added: ‘I expressed the hope that this episode… can be a step toward the active reunification of the National Front’.