JEAN-MARIE LE PEN, founder of France’s far-right National Front, has died at 96, Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, as the party is now known, confirmed on the X social media platform today.

Mr Le Pen, a Holocaust-denying anti-semite, Islamophobe and racist, reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election.

He had recently been exempted from prosecution on health grounds over his party’s suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds.