‘She should give me back my name’

A FURIOUS row has broken out between Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter, current leader Marine, after the decision to suspend his party membership.

He has demanded she “give back my name” and said it would be a scandal for her to become president of France in 2017.

Forty-three years after Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the far-right party, the leadership headed by Marine removed his membership, pending a decision on making it definitive and they now want to take away his title as ‘honorary president’.

Mr Le Pen has hit back calling the move “a crime” and telling journalists “I want her to give me back my name”.

He told Europe 1: “I’m ashamed that the Front National president has the same name as me and I want her to lose it as fast as possible. She can do it by marrying her boyfriend [FN vice president Louis Aliot] or [close advisor and vice president] Mr [Florian] Philippot or whoever she likes.”

He added he could not support her presidential bid for 2017 because “to have such moral principles at the head of the French state would be a scandal”.

Asked if he disowned his daughter, he said “absolutely”, though he declined to say he had definitely cut all ties with her, saying “it’s death that cuts the ties”.

Asked about his daughter’s recent remarks about him “doing malevolent things”, he denounced “lies” and “a veritable plot”.

However the 86-year-old says he had no intention of retiring from politics and would go on turning up at his office at the FN headquarters “unless they stop me from doing it”.

Ill-will between the pair has been growing as Marine has sought to improve the party’s image.

Incidents like Mr Le Pen’s repeated descriptions of the Holocaust as just a ‘detail of history’ have made him an increasing liability. Another example was when he made what was taken as a reference to Hitler’s ovens last year when he said of some critics, especially a Jewish singer, “next time I’ll deal with them in one fell swoop”, using a word (fournée) meaning a batch of baking.

One of the last straws was an interview he gave to a far-right newspaper Rivarol recently in which he attacked the FN’s current policies and leaders. Ms Le Pen said afterwards their political differences were now “irreconcilable”.

Mr Le Pen told journalists he still had support from the party grassroots, saying that was obvious when he was cheered after taking to the podium on May 1, before his daughter gave a speech at Place de l’Opéra in Paris for the traditional FN parade in honour of Joan of Arc.

“I didn’t steal this support, nor did I inherit it,” he said.

Ms Le Pen has accused him of “betraying the party line” and has asked how she could stand as president “while being under the threat of what remarks he might make”.

Photo: flickr.com - Manu