“For months now, Jean-Marie Le Pen has been coming out with little sentences that de-legitimise his daughter, the people who are around her, her companion and the number two of the party, Florian Philippot”.
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He added: ‘I expressed the hope that this episode… can be a step toward the active reunification of the National Front’.
Mr Le Pen vowed to take legal action to overturn his expulsion.
“Later I realised that there was no vote by the committee, which was waiting for orders from Marine Le Pen”.
France has been treated since then to a father-daughter political feud of rare virulence, one that at first riveted the French public but more recently has seemed to irritate it.
Instead of trying to justify his comments like in the past, this time Marine Le Pen openly split with her father, saying he was committing “political suicide”, and later suspended him from the party. He has already won three court cases over his earlier suspension from the party and attempts to strip of his lifetime post as honorary chairman.
Ms Le Pen is believed to be considering a run for the French presidency in 2017 and wants to distance herself from her outspoken father, who has been convicted numerous times of racism and anti-Semitism. “She didn’t want to be involved directly because she would look like a villain”, the 87-year-old told French radio station RTL.
The vote Thursday evening by the bureau followed the decision last month by French prosecutors to charge Le Pen, 87, for genocide denial, which is forbidden in France, in connection with his statement that the Holocaust was a historical detail.
The former Foreign Legion-naire’s inflammatory speeches had made him the figurehead of France’s far right since he co-founded the FN in 1972.
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.
A struggling economy and growing distaste for mainstream politics have helped the FN, with Ms Le Pen skilfully repackaging the party’s traditional dislike of outsiders as opposition to the European Union and defence of secularism.
Mr Le Pen said his appearance before a party committee that voted to exclude him had been a “masquerade”, remote-controlled by his daughter, who stayed away from the hearing to ensure “total impartiality”.
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.
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Later, Mr Gollnisch, a member of the European Parliament, told reporters the board’s decision to expel the elder Le Pen was “pitiless” and “unjustified”, and called it “the manifestation of an incredible ingratitude”.
