Melodramatic feuds are integral to “fake news” politics, and few are more unconvincing than the venom between Marine Le Pen, the wannabe French President, and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Their staged schism is crucial to project Front National, the attempt by a notoriously racist and anti-Semitic far-right party to deliver France’s next head of state.

The deceit is that Ms Le Pen has grown out of her father’s bigotry and, since taking over the FN in 2011, has exorcised its demons. This process has included “expelling” papa from the party for re-iterating his description of the Holocaust as a mere “detail of history”, defending the collaborationist World War II Vichy regime, and making a lot of other ghoulish statements. She is adamant she has nothing to do with such obscenities – cue the often-unrestrained glee with which commentators in countries such as Britain now whitewash her. They push for another “anti-establishment” triumph in France in May, to follow Brexit and Trump; an unexpected victory that would threaten a Frexit and, potentially, the absolute collapse of the European Union.

How hollow such reasoning currently looks, now that Ms Le Pen has admitted she will borrow €6m (£5.2m) from a company owned by her father to fund her presidential campaign. This is not solely because she cannot get a loan from French banks, but because a Russian financial institution that offered the FN millions in 2014 was subsequently declared insolvent.

Le Pen Senior is, of course, a very rich man. Decades of milking the “establishment” gravy train and a substantial inheritance from a friendly tycoon at the start of his career not only allowed him to bring up his three alpha daughters in absolute luxury, but also to bankroll the Le Pen dynasty’s political adventures. The idea that Ms Le Pen would accept yet another massive handout while actually being in dispute with him is a myth. The pair, in fact, still get on extremely well.

Marine Le Pen claims no difference between her policies and Ukip

Last November, Mr Le Pen’s abiding influence on the party he founded was also rubber-stamped by a Paris court who said he would remain Honorary President, despite his “expulsion”. This kept the FN firmly rooted in France’s fascist past.

Those who wish the party well also appear oblivious to the fact that Mr Le Pen remains an FN MEP, as well as a convicted racist and anti-Semite. Moreover, he is a legendary hero to thousands of FN supporters, many of whom share his street thug bigotry. Little wonder that the rabble rousing dinosaur took time out from his latest criminal enquiry (Paris prosecutors want him to go on trial for allegedly inciting more race hate) to say of Donald Trump’s win: “Today the United States, tomorrow France!”

Like many disingenuous opinion formers, the Le Pens want to portray modern France as a cauldron of anger. They blame immigrants and their descendants – and especially those from the former North African colonies – for most of society’s ills. Much of their demagoguery in fact harks back to a recent past when imperial subjects were being tortured and murdered.

The FN is indeed a direct product of the Algerian War of Independence, when Lieutenant Le Pen participated in the barbaric fighting, including the Battle of Algiers. Just a few years earlier, and still just about in living memory, the French were entraining Jews and other “undesirables” to their deaths in German concentration camps during the Holocaust. Such a legacy has a far more powerful effect on the national consciousness than those in other countries appreciate. It is perhaps the primary reason why an FN representative is not going to become president.

The largest political demonstrations of 2016 were against employment reforms introduced by the nation’s socialist government, yet the “France First” FN insists that their insidious brand of identity politics is what really drives society. In such circumstances, Marine won’t do a Donald. Instead, she will continue to rant and rave, bringing shame to a country whose historical involvement in murderous extremism lingers too close in the collective psyche to allow an FN leader.

All of this is by no means related to the sins of the father only. In 2015 Ms Le Pen failed in her bid to punish a comedian who called her a “fascist bitch” in a magazine column. The clear legal position was that such a description was perfectly reasonable when made in a “political context”, the judges ruled.

Many would rightly welcome France having a woman president for the first time, but image is still very important to French voters, just as it is in all western democracies. Harsh as it sounds, a chain-smoking, twice-divorced daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen is not how most French voters, least of all women, view their potential head of state.

Wide-eyed Le Pen backers should also know that the French electoral system is designed to foil extremist chancers. Ms Le Pen is always rejected when she tries to win a seat in the Paris parliament, where her party currently has just two MPs. The FN is principally a hot air protest movement that allows people to let off steam in the first round of elections, but then falls apart in the second.

So it was that the pacte républicain – voters of all political persuasions tactically uniting against a common enemy to protect the Republic – crushed Mr Le Pen in the 2002 presidential election. In the second round run-off, a decidedly lacklustre Jacques Chirac won more than 82 per cent of the vote, by far the biggest electoral landslide in French history. There is no evidence that a generally responsible French electorate has changed significantly during the last 15 years.

I appeared on the BBC’s Dateline London programme back in July and, based on interviews with contacts I made while living in America’s rust belt, I predicted a Trump win because he had nationwide appeal. Le Pen’s powerbase is, in contrast, centred on small town and village councils. She has one of two-dozen FN-linked seats in the European Parliament, an institution she reviles. Like Hillary Clinton in the minds of the US voters, she appears to have been knocking around for decades, owes much of her success to nepotism, and puts her personal career fantasies before the good of her country.

In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts near bouquets of flowers near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A woman arrives with a toy and a bouquet of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A woman reacts as she places flowers in front of the memorial set on the 'Promenade des Anglais' where the truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice EPA In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack People gather to view the floral tributes near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts near bouquets of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday, in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Floral tributes are laid out near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A child's toy is placed among the floral tributes laid out near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Investigators continue at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Crime scene investigators work on the 'Promenade des Anglais' after the truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice EPA In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A forensic expert examines dead bodies covered with a blue sheet on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera city of Nice Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A forensic expert evacuates a dead body on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera city of Nice, after a gunman smashed a truck into a crowd of revellers celebrating Bastille Day Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts as he sits near a French flag along the beachfront the day after a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Discarded items are left on the beach, not far from the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Bullet holes in the windscreen of the lorry that was driven into the crowd at high speed Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man walks through debris on the street in Nice, France, the morning after a lorry ran into a crowd, killing at least 84 and injuring 50 Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Rescue workers help an injured woman to get in a ambulance AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Authorities investigate a truck after it plowed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice, France AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Celebrations of Bastille Day were targeted by the lorry driver AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack People cross the street with their hands on thier heads as a French soldier secures the area after at least 84 people were killed along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A paramedic attends one of the dozens of people injured in the Nice Bastille Day attack In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Soldiers march on street where the lorry crashed into the crowd REUTERS In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man sits next to a body seen on the ground after at least 84 people were killed in Nice, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Bodies are seen on the ground after at least 84 people were killed in Nice, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Children were among the 84 killed in the atrocity, with around 50 more hospitalised Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (2nd L) speaks to the media in Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man walks with his hands up as police officers carry out checks on people in the centre of French Riviera town of Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack With injured people laying in the street police and onlookers react near to a truck in Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police officers, firefighters and rescue workers are seen at the site of the attack AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police officers speak with a soldier after a truck that ploughed into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police shine a light into the cab as they approach the driver's cab of a truck, in Nice AP

The stench of sleaze from her party’s finances also covers a high-profile case in which Ms Le Pen is currently being investigated by Paris prosecutors for employing two EU-funded assistants for her non-parliamentary work. This is illegal under EU rules. She and other FN MEPs face a range of allegations including breach of trust, organised fraud and the use of forged documents. The inquiry could stop Ms Le Pen from being able to stand for president at all.

Note too how Lord Llewellyn, Britain’s Ambassador to Paris, this week told UK MPs that neither he nor his staff have any contact at all with the Le Pens. “With respect to the Front National, we have a policy of not engaging, there is a longstanding policy,” he said.