Outspoken far-right politician describes the advisors of his daughter, Front National leader Marine Le Pen, as ‘a small group of predators ... a mafia’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the honorary president of France’s far-right Front National, has announced he is launching his own group after being suspended from the party for alleged antisemitic and racist comments.

The move comes after Le Pen, 86, launched a scathing attack on his youngest daughter Marine – who now leads the FN – saying she had behaved in a scandalous manner and that he was disowning her.

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On Monday night, Le Pen said his new political group would not rival the FN, the party he founded in 1972.

“I’m not going to create another party, I’m going to form a group that will not compete with the FN,” Le Pen told Radio Courtoisie.

With typical provocation, the outspoken political veteran added the group would be “a parachute in case of disaster; a way of putting pressure to return to the political line that has been followed for decades”.

Marine Le Pen has made electoral gains in France by “de-demonising” the FN in the last few years. Since she took over as party president in 2011, she has attempted to clean up the party of its thuggish, skinhead element, while continuing a hardline nationalist programme built on opposition to immigration, Islam and the European Union.

Her efforts to rehabilitate the FN’s image, however, have been regularly hampered by her father’s provocative outbursts.

Last week, after Le Pen père repeated his assertion that the Holocaust was a mere “detail” of the second world war and made further incendiary comments including a defence of France’s collaborationist leader Marshal Philippe Pétain, his daughter’s patience ran out and he was ordered to attend a party disciplinary hearing.

Jean-Marie Le Pen refused saying it was “below his dignity”.

He told French journalists after being informed he was suspended from the party: “I’m ashamed that the president of the Front National bears my name. I suggest she gets rid of it as fast as possible ... I don’t want the head of the FN to be called Le Pen.”

On Monday evening, Le Pen, who is also facing being stripped of his honorary president title, said he was hoping his daughter would put him before her advisers who he described as a “small group of predators ... a mafia”.

“If Marine Le Pen can find once again the path of free speech, if she is capable of taking responsibilities that are not suggested by her bad advisers, I believe anything is possible,” he told Radio Courtoisie.

Le Pen family feud is a battle for the soul of the Front National – and France Read more

“I think we have to restore a real democracy in the movement ... I am the symbol of the determined faced with decadence.”

A week on, he was also more conciliatory towards his daughter: “Marine Le Pen has great qualities. She is a person who stands up, who shoulders crushing responsibilities,” he said.

A Front National spokesperson played down Le Pen’s latest outburst saying it was a non-event for the party.

“What’s it to be? An association of friends of Jean-Marie Le Pen, by Jean-Marie Le Pen, for Jean-Marie Le Pen and presided over by Jean-Marie Le Pen.” He added that it “went without saying” that the FN would have nothing to do with the association.