Watch: Ukip MEP squares up to Front National founder and Holocaust-denier Jean-Marie Le Pen

Steven Woolfe, Ukip's immigration spokesman, had an angry stand-off with the founder of France's National Front party in the European Parliament

NF founder Jean-Marie Le Pen leads a Paris May Day rally (Getty Images)

Ukip's immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe has had an angry stand-off with Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France's National Front party.

He pushed through Monsieur Le Pen's team as the far-right politician spoke to journalists and photographers in Brussels.

Mr Woolfe said the confrontation was with a journalist who had bumped into him and not with Mr Le Pen. "I was not pushing you," he told Mr Le Pen, adding: "I was pushing him - the journalist stepped on me," he claimed.

A spokesman for Mr Woolfe said Mr Le Pen's security team had contacted him to apologise for the confrontation.

Mr Le Pen, an MEP for south-east France, has never been far away from the headlines. Earlier this month he launched a scathing attack on his daughter, who succeeded him as leader of Front National, the party he led in five French Presidential elections.

He said he hoped she would marry soon and change her last name after she suspended him from the anti-immigration party for repeating his view of the Holocaust as a "detail of history".

Despite their shared anti-immigration and anti-EU stance, Ukip and the French National Front are not allies in the European Parliament.

Ms Le Pen accused Mr Farage of "political dirty tricks" and "media stunts" last summer after she failed to form an official group in the European Parliament.

Her Front National and its hard-right allies from four other EU countries lost about €22m (£17.6m) in public subsidies when they fell short of the seven nationalities they needed to form a political group in Strasbourg.