Marine Le Pen opposes her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s candidacy

France’s far-right Front National (FN) leader Marine Le Pen has said she will move to stop her father Jean-Marie Le Pen from standing in polls later this year.

In a statement Marine Le Pen said her father’s status as honorary president of the party “does not mean he can take the Front National hostage”.

Last week Marine Le Pen condemned her father for repeating his claim that the Nazi gas chambers were “a detail of history”.

Marine Le Pen is widely expected to run for president in 2017.

In the statement, Marine Le Pen says her father “seems to have entered a veritable spiral between a scorched earth strategy and political suicide”.

“Given this situation, I have told him I will oppose… his candidacy in Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur,” she said.

She said Jean-Marie Le Pen’s “crude provocations seem aimed at harming me but, alas, they have dealt a very heavy blow to the whole movement”.

Earlier this month 86-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s founder, gave a radio interview in which he repeated his controversial remarks on the Nazi gas chambers.

His daughter condemned those remarks, leading Jean-Marie Le Pen to declare to a far-right newspaper that “one is only ever betrayed by one’s own”.

Last month the FN polled 25% of votes in the first round of local elections.

While lower than some opinion polls had predicted, correspondents say that performance showed that Marine Le Pen’s strategy, including shutting down the party’s overtly racist elements, is paying off.