The leader of the National Front in France, Marine Le Pen, has moved further to try to distance the party from the one led by her father for nearly 40 years by proposing it to rename it as the “National Rally”.

Although she was overwhelmingly defeated by Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential election last year, she still captured more than a third of the vote.

She has previously denied the party was racist and three years ago, when her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front from 1972 to 2011, repeated his belief that the gas chambers were merely “a detail” of the Second World War, she disowned them as “vulgar provocations”.

Ms Le Pen, who was elected to a new term as president at the party’s congress in Lille, suggested the new name today, according to France 24.

Her efforts to relaunch it have been aided by Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist and leading voice of the American alt-right.

Appearing earlier at the congress at the end of last week, he told delegates “history is on our side and it will take us from victory to victory”.