Austria: FPÖ throws Straches wife out

The FPÖ has excluded Philippa Strache from the party. As a reason, the Austrian right-wing populists called a written statement by the 31-year-old wife of ex-party leader Heinz-Christian Strache. She had stated that she would accept her mandate in Parliament. According to the FPÖ, the message had "a clearly party-damaging character".

Philippa Strache sat on Wednesday at the first session of the new parliament as a non-attached MP behind the SPÖ parliamentarians.

The Straches have fallen out of favor with the FPÖ with their new boss Norbert Hofer. The prosecution investigates both. Heinz-Christian Strache is said to have billed private bills at the expense of the party. He and his wife deny the allegations. The expenses affair and the Ibiza video are likely to be the main reasons for the election debacle of the right-wing party. The FPÖ collapsed on September 29 by almost 10 percentage points to 16.2 percent.

Philippa Strache had run for office on the Viennese state list of the FPÖ and won a mandate for parliament. The party did not really want to clear the way to parliament, but was forced to do so by the provincial electoral authority.

It was not until Tuesday that Strache announced that she would actually accept the mandate. "The slander of recent weeks and the resulting public debate, to which, to my great disappointment, a great deal of former party friends have contributed were offensive, hurtful and, in view of the dimension of widespread false claims, simply reprehensible," she inter alia wrote.

This statement also showed how deep the trenches between the FPÖ and the Strache couple have become. So the party had last let delete the Facebook account of its former boss with its 780,000 followers. The FPÖ also made it clear at an early stage that Philippa Strache would not be a member of the group. Heinz-Christian Strache had informed after the election debacle that he no longer aspires to political office. His party membership is currently suspended.