Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded France’s far-right Nationwide Entrance, has been excluded from the social gathering following a disciplinary listening to.
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The expulsion followed a hearing before six members of the party’s executive bureau where he was summoned to respond to 15 grievances – all statements considered a liability to the new image of the party, as Marine Le Pen eyes new victories in December regional elections.
He added: ‘I expressed the hope that this episode… can be a step toward the active reunification of the National Front’.
The veteran politician claims that he is simply exercising his right to speak freely, but Ms Le Pen believes his rants are jeopardising her bid for power.
Le Pen is accused of bringing the party into disrepute with his extreme views, including his recent comments that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of history.
Marine Le Pen succeeded her father as leader in 2011.
She won an important round in July when party activists, in a mail ballot, voted by 94 per cent to eliminate his title of honorary party president; that ballot, too, was annulled by a judge.
A gifted orator with a taste for controversy, Mr Le Pen has for years been an irritating thorn in the side of his daughter, who took over the party from him in 2011 and tried to steer it away from the overt racism and anti-Semitism of its past.
His lawyer, Frederic Joachim referred to as the choice a “political assassination”.
But Jean-Marie successfully challenged his suspension in court and barged onto the stage during a major party rally in May. “When I do, I will contest it, as I have already contested it”, Jean-Marie said on RTL Radio on 21 August.
He proudly advertised his friendships with some of the most notorious surviving collaborators from the second World War – relationships that marginalised him and his party.
As he stepped out of the auto on Thursday, Jean-Marie Le Pen muttered that “only foot soldiers” would be present at the meeting.
The fight between the Le Pens became public past year, when he said during a video interview for his blog on the National Front website that Jean-Jacques Goldman, a Jewish singer who criticized the National Front, “should go to the oven” – a statement taken by many to be a reference to the Holocaust, though Le Pen denied this.
Voters placed Marine Le Pen’s National Front party first in March local elections – although it did not win any department because of the lack of alliances and the electoral system.
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Le Pen supporters contended the expulsion decision was surprisingly speedy, and the party acknowledged Friday it had yet to be signed by executive bureau members.
