Le Pen vs Le Pen: French far Right’s latest family feud

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.

France’s Le Pen embarrassed by father’s Nazi joke

PARIS- Just when she thought she had cleaned up her far-right National Front’s image, French presidential contender Marine Le Pen was forced to disown her father’s sense of humour on Friday after a Nazi joke.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, 83, the anti-immigration party’s founder and five-time presidential candidate, embarrassed his daughter with a play on words linking President Nicolas Sarkozy’s initials and the Nazi party’s Nuremberg rallies.

“NS: national socialism. Oh sorry! I thought when I watched that square the other day that it was Nuremberg, with NS,” the elder Le Pen told some 6,000 National Front supporters at his daughter’s closing campaign meeting in Paris on Tuesday evening.

He was referring to Sarkozy’s open-air rally in Paris’ Place de la Concorde which drew about 100,000 people last Sunday, according to the ruling conservative party’s estimates.