Time for Le Pipsqueak to end the bad blood

THE Daily Mail has never concealed its deep disdain for Emmanuel Macron.

The French president is not only insufferably arrogant and petulant, but he possesses an almost pathological compulsion to stick the boot into Britain.

Yet yesterday we joined the EU in breathing a huge sigh of relief after his election victory. Whatever our misgivings about ‘Le Pipsqueak’, the alternative would have been worse. Much worse.

Leave aside the ugly far-Right extremism of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party. The fact she wanted closer ties with Vladimir Putin at this of all times made her patently unfit for the Elysee Palace.

But while Macron won resoundingly, this was in no way a glorious triumph.

With an ocean of abstentions, turnout was lower than in any presidential election for half a century. And that Le Pen’s neofascist party could, in a supposedly enlightened Western democracy, bag four in ten votes is truly horrifying.

Likened by some as a political choice ‘between plague and cholera’, the electorate held their noses and plumped for Macron. What does this mean for Britain? Anyone expecting a more cordial relationship with France now the president is done electioneering is in for a shock. After all, this is a man whose anti-Brexit hatred led him spitefully to trash the AstraZeneca jab, costing countless lives.

Despite our countries’ shared commercial, diplomatic and security interests, he has refused to pick up the phone to No10.

Instead of delivering ‘Le Snub’, a mature leader would seek a constructive relationship on illegal Channel migrants, fishing rights, Northern Ireland and Ukraine.

That this popinjay president tiresomely refuses shows the relationship will for some time be needlessly rocky.