France's Le Pen chalks up legal victory in feud with daughter

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the veteran ex-leader of France's National Front (FN), on Tuesday won a legal victory in a battle over his expulsion from the far-right party amid a festering feud with his daughter.  

Daughter Marine, now leading the party her father founded, launched a postal ballot earlier this month on whether to change the FN's statutes and scrap Jean-Marie's position as honorary president.

A furious Jean-Marie successfully sued the party at a court in Nanterre west of Paris, which ruled earlier this month that the ballot should be suspended.

The FN appealed the decision but a higher court in Versailles on Tuesday upheld the ruling, handing a further legal triumph to the veteran provocateur.

The court said the ballot remained suspended "until the organisation of a general assembly that conforms to current statutes".

It is the third legal victory for Jean-Marie Le Pen during an unseemly spat with Marine, who ejected her father from the party in May after he made controversial remarks about Nazi gas chambers.

Marine decided enough was enough after her father repeated his view that the Nazi gas chambers were merely a "detail" of history and also claimed France had to get along with Russia to save the "white world".

But a court ordered her to restore his membership as his suspension had "violated statutory rules" by not specifying it was a temporary measure pending a disciplinary procedure.

The FN is separately appealing the ruling over Le Pen's suspension.