Le Pen loses right-hand man behind party image
Paris, Sept. 21: French farright leader Marine Le Pen’s right-hand man stormed out of the party Thursday as tensions over the National Front’s election defeats this year burst into the open. Florian Philippot, architect of the National Front’s pledge to quit the euro and detoxify its brand, announced his departure after Le Pen bowed to pressure to push him towards the exit.
“Listen, I don’t like being ridiculed, I’ve never liked having nothing to do, so sure, I’m quitting the National Front,” the 35-year-old, one of two party vice presidents since 2012, told France 2 television.
Like other big parties, the National Front (FN) was thrust into soulsearching after May’s battle for the presidency and June’s parliamentary elections brought centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron and his Republic On the Move (LREM) to power.
Philippot said the debate within the FN about shifting away from his focus on economic nationalism back to its traditional priorities of immigration and French identity were “a terrible backward slide”. “I saw how things were developing negatively these past weeks, that maybe I wouldn’t have a place in the project,” he said.
Le Pen, who has attempted to bridge the divide between anti-immigration hardliners and leftist nationalists, said she was “not overjoyed about Florian leaving” but assured: “The Front will get over it, no problem.”
She said his accusations of a return to the extremism of the party’s beginnings under her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, “made absolutely no sense”.