French press review 9 April 2015

The political dimensions of the family squabble between far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, and her outspoken father, Jean-Marie, dominate this morning's front pages. Deprived of the party ticket in this year's French regional elections, will the old guy fade away gracefully? Probably not.

Marine Le Pen is having her adolescent crisis at the age of 46.

As the world knows by now, the leader of the far right Front National (FN) yesterday gave her father the boot, telling the old fart that he was no longer welcome in a political organisation that has, for several years, been trying to edge closer to political respectability, despite a range of extremist positions on immigration, nationality and the European monetary union.

Left-leaning Libération says the father's latest apology for the French collaborationist leader, Philippe Pétain, was the final straw for an ambitious woman who has seen her party crawl from the status of skinhead scum to genuine political alternative for about one quarter of French voters. Marine's efforts to redeem the party's image as xenophobic, anti-semitic and populist have been undermined in the past by papa's glib references to dirty foreigners and his reduction of the murder of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps to "a detail in the history of the Second World War".

She has hesitated to take action for a number of compelling reasons. He's her father, one of the founding pillars of the Front National, he's the honorary president for life of the party, and he represents a certain faction with an uncertain number of extreme right votes. Marine, if you like, didn't want to throw out the father with the bath water.

Jean-Marie's latest attempt to rehabilitate Pétain, the man who enthusiastically administered occupied France for the German invaders, was the tipping point in a long history of public clashes between father and daughter. Yesterday, taking her political courage in both hands, Marine told the old man that she would oppose his candidacy for the party in next December's regional elections in the south of France.

But the story is unlikely to end quietly. Supporters of the old man say he won't take it lying down, having been a second round contender in the presidential race in 2002. Others suggest that Marine's attempts to garner additional support by rejecting her father's form of extremism is a media stunt, and one that will probably backfire.

The Front National has, up to now, been able to campaign on the internal unity ticket, criticising the more moderate political organisations as riven by dissent and personal ambition. Now, they have their own intestinal upheaval, with the added dimension of family drama and the risk of dividing traditional and recently-arrived FN voters.

The editorial in left-leaning Libération is categorical: there is no fundamental difference between the father's anti-semitism and the daughter's hostility to muislims. The Front National says, in its political programme for France, that immigration is the cause of most of the country's woes, the party wants to abolish the right to French nationality for children born in France to foreign parents, they want to close the borders and give priority in the queues for houses and jobs to the "real" French. They would make any expression of solidarity with illegal immigrants a crime.

With or without Papa Jean-Marie, FN party policy is basically xenophobic.

Right-wing Le Figaro takes a properly thrifty view of the whole affair, suggsting that the real danger posed by the Front National is an economic one. Marine Le Pen wants to take France out of the euro, she's in favour of retirement at the age of 60, she wants to boost the basic wage and employ more civil servants. To hell with xenophobia, the woman will have us ruined!

Catholic La Croix says it is a mistake to see the deposition of the father as treachery by the daughter. It's a political move, a reflection of the increasing isolation of the old man from the changing cosmetics of the party he helped to found. And La Croix's analysis, based on opinion polls, suggests that there are voters out there, perhaps as many as 15 per cent nationally, who have refused to support the Front National because of the embarrassing image projected by Jean-Marie. Without her father, Marine could edge up to 30 per cent support, says La Croix.

Tripartite politics may soon become a reality in France.