French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said she will never forgive herself for expelling her father Jean-Marie Le Pen from her party, after he died last week aged 96.

The leader of France's far-right Rassemblement National, a party founded by her late father in 1972 and previously named the Front National, expelled him in 2015 over his anti-Semitic remarks.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has paid tribute to her father Jean-Marie, the founder of the National Front party who died at 96, calling him a “warrior” in politics despite their notoriously harsh political disputes.

For years, the far-right National Rally tried to distance itself from Mr. Le Pen’s racist and antisemitic remarks. But after his death Tuesday, it hailed him as a visionary.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen and the defining figure of France’s postwar far-right movement, has died at the age of 96, according to French network BFMTV.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s main far-right party, has died at 96. Anti-immigration and nationalist ideas that propelled his decades of popularity remain ascendant in the country, across Europe and beyond.

His death was as controversial as his life. Last 14 November, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the 96-year-old Front National founder, who’d been taken to a West Paris hospital after collapsing (since 2022 he’d had several small strokes),

Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party who tapped into blue-collar anger over immigration and globalisation and revelled in minimising the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.