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Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has raised the prospect of electoral convergence between his conservative supporters and the previously ostracised far right, as he praised Marine Le Pen for her support over his legal battles in a memoir about his recent three-week prison stay.
In Diary of a Prisoner, penned at La Santé prison, from which Sarkozy was released on November 10 following a conviction linked to a campaign financing probe, the 70-year-old former centre-right leader describes the “hell” of his grim and noisy world behind bars.
The book, published on Wednesday, details his struggle with the lack of daylight, how he mostly fed himself on dairy products and cereal bars and found something of a religious calling.
Sarkozy, who was in power from 2007 to 2012, reveals an eye-catching shift in his stance on Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National and also settles political scores with Emmanuel Macron, the current president.
Recounting an exchange with Le Pen after the judgment that led to his jail time, Sarkozy said she had asked him whether in future elections he would use his political influence to call for a “republican front”, a practice in which rival parties of left and right collaborate in order to exclude from power the candidates of the far right — which has recently gained ground regardless.
“My response was unambiguous: No,” Sarkozy said. In a later extract, Sarkozy wrote that his Les Républicains party had many differences with the RN and that he did not share its economic policies, but he said the far-right party “does not constitute a danger for the republic” and should not be frozen out.
Les Républicains, whose MPs in the National Assembly are outnumbered by Le Pen’s bloc, has so far shied away from an alliance with the far right, although its members are split over how to steer the party in the run-up to the 2027 presidential election.
Le Pen herself, meanwhile, is also facing legal challenges, and her appeal against a sentence for embezzlement that bans her from running for office for five years is set to start in January.
Sarkozy was sentenced in late September to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy over accusations that he took millions from late Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi to finance his campaign. The former president was cleared of more serious charges and has denied wrongdoing. His appeal is set to be heard early next year.
Although Sarkozy has been convicted in two other separate cases — one also linked to campaign financing and one linked to a conspiracy with his lawyer to obtain information about an investigation into him — the Libyan conviction came as a shock since the judge made the unusual decision to send him to jail before all appeals were exhausted.
Sarkozy, who was held in isolation for his safety, described a “depressing and threatening” atmosphere in the prison, where at night he could hear deafening noises and “shouts and threats that were now clearly targeted at me”.
Occasionally, the account is almost tongue-in-cheek, describing the meals “without wanting to insult those that had prepared it” as “not very appetising”. The cell, equipped with a television on which Sarkozy was able to follow Paris Saint-Germain football games, could almost have passed for “a cheap hotel”, he wrote, describing plastic pillows and a rock-hard mattress.
Known during his presidency for his tough anti-crime rhetoric, Sarkozy said he suffered from what he described as the inhumanity of the prison, where he had regular visits from lawyers and family, including his wife, model and singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
“There was a Formica table and two plastic chairs. Not a glass of water. Not a coffee. Not an ounce of humanity,” he said of the meeting room.
With visits not permitted on Sundays, Sarkozy struck up a conversation with the prison’s chaplain and described a “spiritual awakening”. He visited the pilgrimage site of Lourdes in southern France after his release.
Sarkozy had harsh words for Macron, however, describing him as a former friend who had not had the courage to call him to say he was being stripped of his Legion of Honour medal over one of his convictions.
He wrote that, at Macron’s request, he had accepted a meeting at the Élysée presidential palace before his incarceration, but had refused Macron’s subsequent attempts to have him moved to a more comfortable cell in another prison.
“I had nothing to say to him and no desire for a friendly discussion with him,” Sarkozy wrote, adding their relations had already soured after Macron called snap legislative elections in 2024, which splintered parliament, weakened the political centre and led to the country’s continuing political crisis.
