THE daughter accuses the father of political suicide; the father publicly suspects she would like him dead anyway; and the grand-daughter watches in the wings, ready to pick up the pieces. The feud within the Le Pen dynasty that has ruled France's National Front (FN) for four decades is teetering between high drama and a low farce that could emerge as the biggest threat yet to the far-right party's quest for mainstream power. Party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen's defense this week of his view that Nazi gas chambers were a mere "detail" of war has prompted Marine Le Pen, FN leader since 2011, to demand his role in the party be discussed at a meeting of FN executives on Friday. The blood line linking the two, plus the family talent for invective, make this no ordinary political row — to the glee of rivals who have seen the FN gain from the rise in support for populist parties in a Europe just emerging from recession. "A father and daughter are ripping each other to shreds in public — the masters of Greek tragedy couldn't have staged it better," veteran leftist Daniel Cohn-Bendit, now a political pundit, said this week. "Let's hope this runs and runs." Marine has sought to rid the FN of its anti-Semitic image and position it as an anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic force offering protectionist economic policies to shelter ordinary French from the vagaries of globalization. At some point she was always going to have to find a way of silencing her maverick father, who at 86 uses his title of honorary president of the party to lob regular stink bombs into the French political debate. The tougher is question is: How? The trained lawyer, unanimously re-confirmed as FN leader at a congress last November, has a firm grip on the party as she prepares for a 2017 presidential election in which she is tipped to make the second-round run-off if not win outright. A survey by pollster Harris Interactive found 99 percent of FN supporters believe she "embodies" party values against 28 percent for her father. Harris found the French most associate him with the words "racist", "old" and "trouble-maker". Moreover a separate study by Odoxa found nearly nine out of 10 of FN supporters think it is time for him to quit politics. Yet ejecting him against his will would be another matter: As a shrewd strategist Marine will recall the brief but sharp decline in the party's fortunes after the messy 1998 split with its former No. 2, Bruno Megret. Jean-Marie Le Pen warned: "In times like these you should expect everything". In other words, he will not go quietly. "It's possible that Marine Le Pen wants me dead and gone — but she shouldn't bank on me going along with that," he told French radio two days later, warning the party would "implode" if she kicked him out. — Reuters
