French elites are deluded about fall of ‘Mr Brexit’

Macron’s cock-a-hoop chums cannot grasp that Johnson’s fall will lead to an even firmer UK stance on Ukraine and the EU

Sheer glee. The final ousting of Boris Johnson by practically his entire Cabinet was welcomed in Paris as few other political demises ever were, at home or abroad.

Even Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 defeat against François Hollande wasn’t cause for so much venomous Schadenfreude. Libération used Sir Keir Starmer’s “the first case of sinking ships fleeing the rat” as a splash headline. Quai d’Orsay diplomats and Élysée aides, who’d been using Johnson as an all-purpose piñata for everything that didn’t go their way in or outside Europe, were practically dancing in the streets. It may even have dragged a depressed Emmanuel Macron from the deep funk he’s been in since he lost his parliamentary majority.

“La Chute de M. Brexit” went the Le Monde leader, opening on a list of “lies” from “arrogant”, “spoilt”, “unkempt”, “xenophobic”, “populist”, “dilettante demagogue” Johnson, and closing on a pious wish that the EU would welcome this as “not bad news”. This rare understatement expresses the French elite’s firm belief that once the Blond One is gone, all stuffing will be kicked out of the British resolve on the matter of “Brexit means Brexit”.

Try to explain that no Tory leadership candidate would ever consider bringing back submission to ECJ rulings, or enforce the Northern Ireland Protocol to the letter, because it would spell their immediate defeat, and you’re met with stares of incomprehension. Remind Paris’s elegant liberals that Sir Keir ( encore lui) has vowed not to even try to reverse Brexit, and it simply doesn’t compute. “But it would be in Britain’s interest!” they counter.

Suggest that a Tory-led Britain is instead a lot more likely to lower taxes, slash regulation and pursue international trade deals in all its hard-won Brexit freedom, and commiserating smiles blossom, because this is “not the French way” and therefore will fail. “Your own Bank of England already forecasts 11 per cent inflation this year!” they object. Taking your pain when it hits to be nimbler faster afterwards is not something French society, high on benefits and state subsidies, ever wants to conceive.

If Johnson was seen here as Monsieur Brexit, Macron painted himself blue and gold as Monsieur Europe. Yet France’s supposed leading status in Europe is another delusion. Macron’s counterproductive telephone diplomacy with Putin has not gone down well with an increasing number of EU (and Nato) members.

At the Conversations Tocqueville international conference held this weekend on the Ukraine crisis, Hubert Védrine, France’s former foreign minister under Jacques Chirac, and probably the most influential outside adviser to Macron on foreign policy, redefined what has become hard not to call official French weaselism, masquerading as sophistication.

“Let’s not talk about values,” Védrine said in a weary voice, just after Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Lithuanian foreign minister, had done just that. “It’s like the wars of religions, it leads nowhere.” The implication was that siding squarely with Ukraine, as Johnson had done from day one, side by side with many EU nations, was unrealistic – almost uncouth.

After which, I’m afraid, our Grand Old Man, getting the feeling that the room wasn’t on his side, indulged in what his friend at the Élysée calls “a lie” when it comes from BoJo’s mouth. “Our populations don’t want us to go to war, so we wouldn’t win a vote in parliament anyway,” conveniently forgetting that the Constitution of the Fifth Republic bestows complete presidential control over defence and foreign policy. (France never went to parliament before sending troops to Libya, Mali etc.)

Of course, since it was for the French cause, it was all right.

Remind Paris’s elegant liberals that Starmer has vowed not to even try to reverse Brexit, and it simply doesn’t compute