Family Rift Threatens French Right Party Conference

A rift between the leader of the right wing National Front party in France, Marine le Pen, and her father Jean-Marie is threatening to turn the party’s summer conference into chaos, with it being made clear his presence there is "undesirable".

Jean-Marie le Pen is gathering his supporters and inviting as many of them to attend to summer conference in Marseilles this weekend. However, Marine Le Pen told radio station RTL that the presence of her father was "not desirable, as it would create a media buzz".

French far-right National Front (FN) party's president Marine Le Pen (left)and Front National's honorary president Jean-Marie Le Pen (right)

© AFP 2023

In April 2015, Le Pen reiterated his past comments that the Nazi gas chambers were a mere detail of history, and his daughter suspended him from the party. He denounced her and told her to marry so that she could no longer have the family name. Le Pen senior also said it would be "scandalous" if his daughter won in the 2017 French presidential elections after the way she treated him. 

He challenged the suspension in the courts and won the case and re-instatement to the party. However, in August 2015 a special meeting of the party expelled him and tensions remain between father and daughter.

Despite this, Le Pen Senior plans to address the conference over the weekend and Marine’s supporters fear he will use the occasion to relaunch himself within the party he founded in 1972.

Presidency Challenge Threat

Marine le Pen considers herself as a serious challenger for the presidency of France, having taken over the leadership of the party when it fell into financial trouble.

France’s far-right National Front president Marine Le Pen, center, delivers her speech at Opera Plaza during the annual May Day march, in Paris, France, Friday, May 1, 2015.

© AP Photo

In 2007, after fighting that year’s elections, the party was in financial trouble and Jean-Marie Le Pen was forced to sell the HQ of the Front National as well as his personal armored car. Twenty of his permanent staff were dismissed the next year. He announced he would retire by 2010 and spent the next two years awaiting retirement. 

After Marine Le Pen took over in 2011, things started to go awry between her and her father as she softened the party’s line on xenophobia and became more popular. She was the new star on the rise. 

In two polls in 2013, Marine le Pen was ahead of President François Hollande. By 2014, the party had gained 24.86% of the vote in the European Elections and 24 of France's 74 seats. It was a huge success and a shock to many in the center and on the left.

Marine le Pen will not be happy if her father or his supporters turn up and steal the limelight from what used to be a family affair.