Jean-Marie Le Pen, honorary president of France’s Front National party, has announced he will abandon plans to stand in regional elections this year.
The move comes after a bitter family feud that has set Le Pen against his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who leads the far-right party.
Relations between father and daughter degenerated into a public spat last week after Le Pen Sr, 86, reiterated his assertion that the Holocaust was a “mere detail” in the history of the second world war, and lauded the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis, among other provocative statements.
Marine Le Pen, who has spent five years trying to clean up the party’s racist and anti-semitic image, was furious. She called on her father to retire gracefully from frontline politics and said she opposed him standing as head of the FN list for the Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur region in elections in December.
She also lambasted his strategy as “somewhere between scorched earth and political suicide”. She said: “His status as honorary president does not give him the right to hijack the Front National with vulgar provocations seemingly designed to damage me, but that unfortunately hit the whole movement.”
Initially, Le Pen Sr dug in his heels and said he would only leave the political ring “at the end of the bout, whether victor or vanquished”.
In an interview with the centre-right Le Figaro newspaper on Monday, however, he appeared to have thrown in the towel. “I still think I am the best candidate for the Front National, but if I have to sacrifice this for the future of the party I will not be the one who will cause the damage,” he said.
He suggested his granddaughter Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, 25, would be an excellent choice to replace him. “If she accepts I think she will a very effective head of list. Certainly, the best, I won’t say after me, but all the same …”
His public anointment of his granddaughter was seen as another dig at his daughter. Maréchal-Le Pen, a rising star in the FN who is seen to hold more conservative views similar to her grandfather’s, has staunchly refused to follow her aunt and criticise him.
Jean-Marie Le Pen is expected to make a formal statement later on Monday. He still faces a party disciplinary hearing.
