Nicolas Sarkozy wants to turn the page on the era of French president Jacques Chirac in next year’s elections. But France’s interior minister and leader of the ruling centre-right UMP party no longer seems to want to tear up the Chirac legacy and burn it.

The party’s youth conference at the weekend in Marseilles produced an unexpected note of harmony, as Dominique de Villepin, France’s prime minister, made a public show of burying the hatchet with Mr Sarkozy, his great rival.