The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has said Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party is “not a danger” to France, and he would not support a united front of parties against Le Pen at the next election.

In his new book, written at a “small plywood table” in prison where he recently served 20 days of a sentence for criminal conspiracy, Sarkozy said many of his former supporters were now potential Le Pen voters, and he appeared to include the RN in his vision of a broad French right.

The path to rebuilding that right, he wrote, “might be long but I’m certain it can only happen through a spirit of gathering together in the broadest sense possible, with no exclusions and no opprobrium”.

Sarkozy’s comments in The Diary of a Prisoner come as Le Pen’s party appeals to tr

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