Marine Le Pen’s bid to rechristen her far-Right Front National party hit instant turbulence on Monday over claims another political group owned the rights to the new name and that it had links to wartime Nazi collaborators.

Ms Le Pen on Sunday proposed changing the name of the FN to Rassemblement National - loosely translated as National Rally in English - as part of a makeover aimed at ridding the French far-Right party of its racism-tinted past and kick starting its waning political fortunes after defeat in presidential and legislative elections.

She made the proposal at the close of a two-day party conference where members voted to definitively sever ties with her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the firebrand founder of the movement who has a long history of making racist and anti-Semitic remarks.

Ms Le Pen said the FN’s current name was "associated with a glorious and epic history that no-one can deny" but added: "For a lot of French people… it's a psychological barrier.”

However, it transpires that a little-known hard-Right “Gaullist sovereignist” movement also claims to own the rights to the name Rassemblement National, saying it filed for them at France’s national industrial property institute in 2013.