'Be more like Trump': Jean-Marie Le Pen criticises daughter's presidential campaign

The French far-right icon Jean-Marie Le Pen has criticised his daughter's campaign to become France's next president, saying she should have been more aggressive like Donald Trump.

The Front National received about 7.6 million votes in Sunday's first round, with leader Marine Le Pen set to face centrist opponent Emmanuel Macron in the presidential runoff on 7 May.

The number of votes was a record for the party, with Le Pen only narrowly beaten by Macron.

However, it's 88-year-old founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, criticised his daughter and said he would have campaigned differently.

"I think her campaign was too laid-back. If I'd been in her place I would have had a Trump-like campaign, a more open one, very aggressive against those responsible for the decadence of our country, whether left or right," Jean-Marie Le Pen told RTL radio.

The comments are the latest in a tussle between the two over the future direction of the far-right party since Marine Le Pen moved to clean up its image and rid it of xenophobic and anti-Semitic associations.

This included expelling her father from the party in August 2015 after he made controversial comments about the Holocaust – describing it as a "detail of history" – and defended Philippe Pétain, the leader of France's Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime in the 1940s.

She issued a scathing attack on her father at the time, accusing him of trying to "hijack the Front National with vulgar provocations".

Last week, the war of words renewed as Marine Le Pen issued another attack in an interview with RMC radio, calling herself a "feminist" who had freed herself from her authoritarian father.

She told voters she planned to keep her distance from him, and said being his daughter is "difficult".

She justified her father's exclusion from the party, saying: "He was always trying to provoke me. He was systemically disputing the party line."

Opinion polls suggest Macron is firm favourite to win the second round but Marine Le Pen said: "We can win, we will win."

In an apparent attempt to broaden her voter appeal, she stepped down as leader of the Front National on 24 April. She told French TV she wanted to be above party politics, saying: "Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate."

She has campaigned on pledges to slash immigration, fight the threat of Islamic extremism and renegotiate France's relationship with the EU.