Le Pen Dumps Chief Euroskeptic, Signaling Shift for National Front
September 21 2017 - 9:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Stacy Meichtry
PARIS--The architect of Marine Le Pen's anti-euro stance has
quit National Front.
Florian Philippot, the party's No. 2 official who championed its
embrace of economic nationalism in this year's presidential
election, said he had left the party Thursday after Ms. Le Pen
stripped him of his role as vice president of strategy and
communications.
"I was told I was vice president of nothing. I don't like being
ridiculed, nor do I like having nothing to do, so you bet I quit
the party," Mr. Philippot said on French TV.
The move paves the way for National Front to make a
full-throated return to identity politics, drawing on its
anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim base, while jettisoning the broader
message of economic "sovereignty" that Mr. Philippot
championed.
National Front, once considered an imminent threat to France's
political establishment, is in upheaval. Party members have been
pushing Ms. Le Pen to abandon her opposition to the euro, which
they blame for her election defeat as well as the party's
disappointing performance in parliamentary races a month later.
The National Front leader lost by a surprisingly wide margin to
upstart Emmanuel Macron, who ran on a staunch pro-European Union
platform diametrically opposed to Ms. Le Pen's plan to pull France
from the economic bloc and its common currency, the euro.
Ms. Le Pen's opposition to the euro took shape after she
recruited Mr. Philippot as her right-hand man in the run-up to the
2012 elections.
Mr. Philippot, a graduate of France's elite Ecole Nationale
d'Administration who is openly gay, was initially an outlier in
National Front's rowdy right-wing politics. But Mr. Philippot's
plan to rebrand National Front as a party of economic
nationalism--and bury its xenophobic past--appealed to Ms. Le Pen
who had recently succeeded her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the
group's leader.
Ms. Le Pen's elevation of Mr. Philippot broadened her appeal,
especially with left-wing voters in France's hollowed-out
industrial areas, allowing her party to notch key victories in
local and European Parliament elections. But Mr. Philippot's rise
also led to Ms. Le Pen's estrangement from her father and his
followers.
In January, Ms. Le Pen unveiled a plan to remove France from the
euro. The move helped turn the presidential election into a
referendum on the euro as Mr. Macron rushed to the currency's
defense, figuratively wrapping himself in the EU's blue and
gold-starred flag.
Ms. Le Pen's loss left many party members clamoring for Mr.
Philippot's departure. Mr. Philippot responded by founding Les
Patriotes, a group of National Front members who support his
agenda.
Earlier this month, Mr. Philippot was photographed sitting down
to a meal of couscous--a popular Arab dish--prompting National
Front supporters to hound him on Twitter, unleashing the hashtag
#couscousgate.
The final straw came during a meeting of party leaders this week
as Ms. Le Pen demanded Mr. Philippot put an end to his "conflict of
interest" as head of Les Patriotes. Mr. Philippot's refusal, she
said, forced her to take away his brief as strategic chief.
Write to Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 21, 2017 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
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