How Marion Le Pen is undermining her aunt’s campaign

Marine Le Pen sees plots everywhere. In her view the media, the Socialists, the judiciary and even the European Union have been conniving in recent months to enfeeble her presidential campaign. As she said during last week’s televised debate, ‘I’m politically persecuted’. But the plot with the potential to cause the greatest damage to the National Front leader is likely to come from within.

It will be led by her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, and her growing number of supporters within the National Front who believe Marine Le Pen’s detoxification of the party she inherited from her father in 2011 has softened their core beliefs to an unacceptable degree. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a far-right firebrand, and many within the party yearn for a return to those days; for a strong, uncompromising leader who knew his territory and never strayed from it.