France’s opposition Socialists on Friday issued a last-ditch appeal to voters to deny President Nicolas Sarkozy a crushing majority in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, claiming he would use it to push through a big rise in value-added tax.

In the final exchanges of a marathon electoral season, Ségolène Royal, former presidential candidate and the Socialists’ de facto campaign leader, urged voters to back the centre-left, to stop the president “from thinking that he can do what he wants and worse”.