Le
Pen vs Le Pen: French far Right’s latest family feud
Marion
Maréchal-Le Pen’s views are increasingly at odds with the party
line — putting her aunt in a difficult position.
By NICHOLAS
VINOCUR 12/13/16, 5:31 AM CET Updated 12/13/16, 9:59 AM CET
PARIS — France’s
National Front is at risk of a major split ahead of next year’s
presidential election, with party leader Marine Le Pen on one side
and her combative niece on the other.
The spat began last
week when Marion Maréchal-Le Pen went against the party line by
saying she opposed full public reimbursement for abortions. It was
far from the first time the 26-year-old MP, who is beloved by
Catholic conservatives, had struck out on her own.
In the past month,
she spelled out independent positions on the 35-hour work week (she
is against it,) the role of her grandfather Jean-Marie Le Pen (she
thinks he can play a role in the National Front’s campaign despite
being kicked out of the party) and her aunt’s choice of a blue rose
as her campaign logo (she does not see it, like Marine does, as a mix
of the socialist and nationalist symbols).
But the abortion
fight is different.
Maréchal-Le Pen
challenged National Front Vice President Florian Philippot more
directly than ever before and criticized her aunt’s flip-flopping
on the abortion issue. It was the first time she had asserted herself
so clearly, and on Sunday, Marine Le Pen was forced to step in to
address the conflict, siding with Philippot.
“There
are millions of French patriots who … will not forgive us for
getting lost in these sorts of petty squabbles” —
Marine Le Pen
Beyond Maréchal-Le
Pen’s growing independence, the spat highlighted radically
diverging views within the Front on a strategic question: How the
party should deal with conservative presidential candidate François
Fillon, who according to polls would crush Le Pen in the election’s
final round.
“There are two
totally different views on how to deal with Fillon,” said Joel
Gombin, a political scientist who specializes in the Front.
Maréchal-Le Pen “sees Fillon as a strategic threat for the
National Front because he is hunting on their grounds, which creates
a need to reassert several questions — notably those having to do
with moral conservatism.
“Philippot is of
the opposite view: that this is a great chance to underscore the
divide between globalizers and patriots, as he defines it …
Clearly, Marion now sees a chance to impose her vision more
forcefully.”
‘That person’
For the National
Front, Fillon’s landslide victory in a conservative primary
election created a dilemma: He is a staunch conservative, campaigning
on Catholic values, who often sounds more right-wing than Le Pen,
especially on the economy.
Should the National
Front attack him from the Right or the Left? Philippot, a statist
anti-European, chose the latter option and accused Fillon of being a
cold-hearted capitalist, dispatched by the European Commission to
destroy the French welfare state.
Maréchal-Le Pen and
her followers took the opposite tack. The difference in opinion might
have remained internal, had Maréchal-Le Pen not decided to make it
public by speaking out on abortions. (Abortion has been legal in
France since 1981 and 100 percent reimbursed by the state since
2013.)
Philippot, who backs
the party line that the abortion law should not be changed, reacted
quickly. Questioned about Maréchal-Le Pen’s position, he referred
to her as “that person” and said she was “alone,” “isolated”
and out of step with the party’s president.
Maréchal-Le Pen
retaliated, telling a Sunday newspaper that Philippot lacked respect,
accused him of trying to set party policy on his own and criticized
her aunt for having changed her position on abortion.
“I would have
liked a bit more respect from Florian Philippot,” she told the JDD
newspaper. “There is a minimum of respect and goodwill to have.
Nothing can justify such aggression.”
Caught in the
crossfire, Le Pen tried to reassert authority in an interview of her
own. As the Front’s elected president, she said, she was free to
defend any position. While in 2012 she opposed full reimbursement of
what she called “comfort abortions,” Le Pen said that position
had been taken as a concession to a hardline faction in the party
that no longer existed.
“There are
millions of French patriots who … will not forgive us for getting
lost in these sorts of petty squabbles,” she told BFMTV.
Big clash looms
Le Pen’s
intervention is unlikely to be the last word in an ideological and
strategic conflict that has divided the National Front for years.
“There will have
to be a vote and we will see who wins” — A party official
Convinced that
Fillon’s rise shows a desire for frank conservatism in France,
Maréchal-Le Pen’s camp is growing more assertive. On Monday, an
elected official in southern France told POLITICO it was only a
matter of time before her team demanded a full-blown reckoning with
Philippot’s followers.
“After 2017, we
will no longer be able to continue with this sort of incoherence
inside the party,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
“There will have to be a vote and we will see who wins.”
His assessment
chimed with the view put forward last week by Guillaume Laroze, a gay
law student who left the party after receiving homophobic insults
online.
Laroze told POLITICO
that some “80 percent” of the party’s rank-and-file members
sided with Maréchal-Le Pen and wanted the National Front to adopt a
clearer conservative agenda. The strain of trying to be “Neither
Right, nor Left, but the National Front” — to borrow an
expression from Samuel Maréchal, the man who raised Marion — would
ultimately prove too great, and the party would formally split into
two, Laroze said.
So far, Le Pen has
sided with Philippot. In addition to stating that she had no
intention of changing her position on abortion, she has echoed her
vice president by attacking Fillon as an “ultra-liberal”
candidate.
In a sign that Le
Pen does not want to leave Fillon unchallenged on the Right, she
chose to make one of her first major policy announcements a hardline
one: arguing that undocumented children should no longer be eligible
for social benefits or free schooling.
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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