Marine Le Pen will ‘never forgive herself’ for expelling father from far-right party he founded

Marine Le Pen said she regrets expelling her father from National Rally - (AP)

Marine Le Pen has expressed regret for expelling her late father from the far-right party he founded.

Le Pen admitted she would “never forgive herself” for removing her fatherJean-Marie Le Pen from National Front (FN), National Rally (RN) in 2015.

She expelled him from the party four years after she succeeded him in 2011 after he repeated a previous remark that the Holocaust was a “detail of history” – words that had brought a conviction for Holocaust denial.

“I will never forgive myself for this decision because I know it caused him immense pain,” she told the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche less than a week after his death.

Mr Le Pen died aged 96 on Tuesday last week and was buried at a private funeral in his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer in southern Brittany.

Mr Le Pen died aged 96 on Tuesday last week and was buried at a private funeral in his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer (AP)

His supporters saw him as a charismatic figure who would speak up for the everyman, but he was widely condemned as a bigot who was convicted several times by the courts for his remarks. In 1990, he was convicted for the Holocaust denial remark three years after he made it during a radio interview.

In 2015, he repeated the quote, saying he “did not at all” regret it, leading to a new conviction in 2016, just after he was expelled from the party he founded by his daughter.

Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the National Front, renamed National Rally, in 1972 (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Le Pen described her father’s expulsion as “one of the most difficult decisions of my life”, adding: “Until the day I die, I will always ask myself if I could have acted differently.”

Referring to him as “Papa” in an interview, she said: “It is a little unfair to judge him only in the light of these controversies.

“His political career spanned nearly 80 years and it was inevitable that there would be topics that created controversies, unless you were a sort of lightweight Sarkozyite [supporter of Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative former president] or Socialist. What is unfortunate is that he got caught up in these provocations.”

French President Emmanuel Macron described Jean-Marie Le Pen as a "historic figure of the far right", adding that "history will judge" his role in the country's political life.