Front National new name: Macron spokesman slams reform and says ‘NOTHING will change’

Earlier on Sunday, right-wing chief Marine Le Pen announced at a party congress in the northern city of Lille that the Front National (FN) party should be changed to Rassemblement National (National Rally) in a bid to widen its voter base and shed the racist image it developed under the leadership of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Mr Griveaux told France’s Europe 1 radio: “The name change is a non-event. The Front National can exclude [hardline members], change name, change logo, change image – at the end of the day it will always be a private company whose sole purpose is to serve the interests of the Le Pen family.

“And so yes – you can replace Jean-Marie by Marine, and Marine by [her niece] Marion [Maréchal Le Pen], but at the end the day, nothing will ever change.”

The party’s 89-year-old founder, Jean-Marie, told France Inter radio on Monday that his estranged daughter’s “disastrous” proposal to change the party’s name was a “political assassination”.

Mr Le Pen, who was stripped of his role as honorary president over the weekend following a change in the FN’s statutes, said the new name “lacked imagination” and that the “inimitable” Front National was more than just a party.

He said: “It’s more than a political group: it’s a soul, it’s a story, it’s a past.”

Mrs Le Pen’s former aide Florian Philippot also slammed Mrs Le Pen’s efforts to rebrand the FN, telling the French news channel BFM TV that the congress was “terrible” and marked the party’s “return” to its hardline past.

Left-wing firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon expressed the opposite opinion, praising Mrs Le Pen’s active efforts to overhaul her party and reassert her position as one of France’s main opposition leaders following her crushing defeat to President Emmanuel Macron last May.

Mr Mélenchon told the French television channel France 3 on Sunday: “[Mrs Le Pen] is following in the footsteps of other far-right leaders in Europe and mixing xenophobia with liberalism.

“Her policy of de-demonisation is now one of banalisation. She dreams of becoming a mainstream party … and this makes her a formidable adversary.”

Mrs Le Pen, for her part, told her supporters on Sunday that the party’s priority should be to win power.

“Our goal is clear: power… We were originally a protest party. There should be no doubt now that we can be a ruling party,” she said, adding that the name Front National had to be dropped because it remained for many French people a “psychological barrier”.