French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has proposed changing her party’s name from Front National (National Front) to Rassemblement National (National Rally).
Le Pen announced the rebranding plan during a members’ conference in the northern town of Lille on Sunday, saying the party - founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 1972 - needed a name that “supported the nation”, as part of a “wider makeover”.
“We were originally a protest party,” she said. “There should be no doubt now that we can be a ruling party.”
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The idea of changing the party’s name was only approved by a narrow majority of National Front members at the conference, at 52%, says France 24.
All party members will now have the chance to take part in a postal vote to have their say, according to Reuters.
Le Pen, who became leader of the National Front in 2011, has already expelled her father from the party over his Holocaust denial, but “wants to take further steps to shake off the stigma of the party’s xenophobic past before the 2019 European Parliament election”, reports Politico
Her father has described the prospect of a name change as “political suicide”.
Meanwhile, critics have pointed out that the new name, National Rally, bears a striking similarity to the National Popular Rally, a French group that advocated collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World War.
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