France’s far-right National Front tries to move past feud

“We will act in an identical strategy to the FN, even when we aren’t a part of it”.

French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen said Saturday he was starting his own party, just days after he was thrown out of the National Front group over a series of offensive comments.

Le Pen père says his aim is to “reunite” the movement but also to bring it back to the political positions it stood for under his leadership, in other words to reject Marine’s efforts to rebrand the party.

Provisionally referred to as the Rassemblement Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (Blue-White-Red Rally) after the colors of the French flag, the organisation shall be like Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Bleu-Marine (Marine Blue Rally), Jean-Marie Le Pen claimed.

“You will not be orphans”, Le Pen, who was expelled from the FN last month over his anti-Semitic remarks, told his supporters.

This came at a time when Marine, who came in third in France’s 2012 presidential election, was continuing to seek to change the party to make it more appealing to mainstream voters. “This poses no problem”, she said on the sidelines of the FN meeting.

‘He does what he wants, he is a free man’.

He dismissed the hearing as a “mockery” and an “ambush” and blamed Miss Le Pen, who took over from him as leader in 2011, of pulling the strings from afar.

A large majority of members reportedly voted for a new constitution that would have stripped him of his honorary presidency before the vote was stopped due to a legal challenge by Le Pen senior. He said he still believes Nazi gas chambers used to kill several million Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled, and opposition intellectuals and clergy are but a “mere detail” of history.

Miss Le Pen then openly split with her father, saying he was committing “political suicide”.

But the former Foreign Legionnaire has refused to go quietly, vowing to “reconquer” the party he founded in 1972.