Hollande's dreadful week proves that 'a week is a long time in politics'

"Trust me Frankie..."  "Ummm, okay Angie, I believe you..:(

It's been a terrible week for François Hollande, although he began it rather well. Monday saw him meeting with American Vice President Joe Biden, who praised him for what he called his "decisive" decision to send troops to Mali. 

Ah, Mali. Those had been indeed halycyon days. Hollande's army had swept with brio through Mali and pushed the rebels back into tiny strongholds in the north of the country, and he received such a hero's welcome during his visit to Mali to meet Malian representatives that he called it "the most important day of my political life." Better still, the whole shebang had been so popular with voters that it almost made France forget its economic woes.

But that was all forgotten the next day. It was Tuesday, and the analysts and some politicians suddenly brought him back down to earth with a bump. 'It's all very well making terrorists run away' they said 'but they are still alive and the hard bit - the asymmetrical warfare bit where they use road bombs and suicide bombers - is not going to be anything like as easy. Ask Bush, whose 'lightning' war to topple Saddam lasted a decade.' Hollande did not respond to the reports, hoping as he surely must have been that the upcoming EU budget summit would restore his aura.

But things got off to an immediate and unauspicious start on Wednesday morning, when Germany rejected Hollande's claim that the euro is overvalued and added that interest rates should not be used to boost competitiveness. Also, rumours began to circulate that David Cameron was going to drive a very hard bargain at the EU summit later in the week and that he was gunning for Hollande. Still, Angela Merkel did come over to Paris to watch the France-Germany football match, so maybe he could woo her over to seeing his point of view? The answer is 'no, he couldn't' because a Merkel spokesperson described their pre-match meeting to discuss the summit as "short and intense." The Elysée was forced to deny any major disagreement between them, and as if that wasn't enough the Germans beat France 1-2. Deary me. But even worse news would come Hollande's way on Thursday morning.

That was when dastastardly David Cameron spoilt his lunch in Brussels as the start of the summit with a violently uncompromising declaration to journalists in which he bluntly warned the EU - and Hollande in particular - that he would not sign the EU budget bill unless it was cut, and not increased as Hollande wanted it to be. "When we were last here in November, the numbers that were put forward were much too high." said Cameron. "They need to come down. And if they don't come down, there won't be a deal." Great Britain had declared budgetary war on France and an angrily defiant Hollande said that he would not give in. Metaphorical cruise missiles were lobbed from one side of Brussels to the other all day long, far into the evening, and onwards into a chilly night in all senses of the word.

As usual, the negotiations were acrimonious and overshadowed by Europe's 'Big Five' - Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France and Spain. And as is often the case they split up into two opposing camps, with France, Spain and Italy fighting for a budget increase and Britain and Germany, with Merkel finally making it clear that she was backing Cameron, opposing them with plans for a decrease.

Things got so bad for Hollande that he crawled sulkily back into his room, from which he didn't move or say a word, even refusing to answer 2am phone calls from EU leaders who wanted him to attend a meeting with Cameron and Merkel. It all reminded me of Hitler's last few desperate days in the bunker.

Finally though, and after a night of the kind of high drama and petulant theatrics which we have resignedly come to expect at EU summit meetings, Europe's leaders managed to thrash out a budget agreement for the rest of the decade. 

It was all over. Cameron had obtained almost all of the cuts he wanted, and Hollande was handed down a crumb or two from the table in order that he may try and save face when he got home. But it was not to be, and by the time he got back to Paris the press, politicians and public alike had already been savagely mauling him for a couple of hours. He was weak, they said, he had caved in, he had let his country down, he was a loser.

'Hollande's Trafalgar?' 'Cameron and Merkel impose austerity on Hollande'. '"Tightfisted Europe" wins out over Hollande'. Those are just three of the top-of-the-homepage headlines which were to be read in the French press yesterday evening. Cruel reading they must have made for Hollande, but crueller still is that they were accurate.

François Hollande must be musing ruefully today about what could arguably be called 'the worst week of his political life'. With his ephemeral success in Mali behind him, and a terrible drubbing in Europe to cap his week off, he knows that he now has no major crusade left to fight in order to keep the public's mind off the awful state of the economy, an economy which he shall now be forced to confront.

"A week is a long time in politics" said British Sixties PM Harold Wilson. Indeed it is, as François Hollande has just found out to his cost.

Britain's 'in-out' EU bluster and France's point-scoring riposte

Really?

Ah, you can always count on the French and Brits to cut their noses off to spite their faces when it comes to national differences, and that is exactly what is happening at the moment in the imbroglio which has followed David Cameron's recent announcement of an 'in or out' referendum for EU membership by 2017.

If David Cameron's proposed referendum were to be held today the verdict would be an unequivocal 'DEHORS!' As for the French, a BVA poll for Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France suggests that 52% of French voters would like to see Britain out of Europe, although another poll gives a slight advantage to those who would like les Rosbifs to remain.

French politicians have added to the negative view of Cameron's demands for changes in EU rules which he says are too constraining, with François 'Normal Flamby' Hollande insisting that the EU must be accepted as it is and Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius saying that Europe was not a self-service canteen where people pick and chose what, and how much, they want to eat, and that if Britain wanted to leave he'd roll out the red carpet.

Now all this kerfuffle might suit Cameron, whose arm-twisting of Europe may succeed in holding off the rabid dogs of his anti-EU right wing backbenchers, and it is certainly right up Hollande's rue to see his government Bashing the Brits at a time when he desperately needs to improve his popularity ratings with French voters, but at the end of the day it's all bluster and posture.

After all, who but the most cynical of British Europhobes seriously believes that Britain would have anything to gain by leaving Europe? Access to the Single Market would be severely curtailed and Britain's efforts to create an EU economic powerhouse capable of offering at least limited resistance to the threat posed by up and coming economies around the world would come to naught. And if there is anyone out there who is naive enough to believe that Britain's 'Special Relationship' with the USA could help it overcome the major trade difficulties which would inevitably follow a 'Brexit' they need to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act as terminally deluded individuals who are hell-bent on self-harm. America's strategic prioritising eyes began swivelling eastwards of Europe and towards the Far East years ago, as it is there that future planetary battles for economic and military superiority are destined to be fought.

The French would not fare any better in the event of a British exit, again for mainly economic reasons. The City, for all of France's efforts to depict it as the Devil incarnate of Evil Capitalism, is absolutely essential to France's economic survival as a major world nation. The City is the world's leading financial centre, and it's role in facilitating French and European exports to the rest of the world is pivotal, as is its role in attracting foreign investment to Europe from every single sizeable country or alliance of countries around the world. All the major French industries are present there for this reason, and Britain's isolation from Europe would seriously jeopardise France's trading position with America, Asia and others and further isolate it from the world's investment tissue. There is no EU equivalent of The City, mainly because all past efforts to create one have been stymied by......France itself, for reasons of national rivalry, notably with Germany. Then there's defence, and any EU without Britain would be a paper tiger in terms of its capacity to react militarily to threats from outside Europe. That is currently being cruelly and ironically demonstrated in France's ongoing Mali campaign by the fact that without British, American and Spanish military transport and refueling planes, France's limited number of old and ageing aircraft would not have been able to take the 3,700 and counting French troops to the theatre of operations.

This pseudo-spat is typical of how Europe is run. All serious issues within the EU which demand the presence of realism and clear-headed thinking are obfuscated by narrow national interests, be they electoral or other. Britain has a list of perceived griefs that it would like the EU to address, and common sense demands that a compromise be thrashed out around the table. It's as simple as that.

So Mesdames et Messieurs our political leaders, it's high time you stopped playing to the gallery with your empty threats of a referendum and invitations to the British to leave and started doing what we, your taxpayers, expect of you, which is to find solutions to problems.

Is that really too much to ask?

The ongoing fable of the wooing of Germany

Are you sitting comfortably children? Good. Then we'll begin.
-------------

Everybody's favourite girl

Imagine for a moment that countries are like people, and that just like people they may be friends or enemies, work colleagues or strangers, and some are even lovers or married couples. Then ask yourself this; if France, Germany and Great Britiain were people, what would their relationships be like?

People have various strong points and failings, and they are more or less attracted to each other by a combination of many factors such as their natural affinities, characters, views on the world, future prospects, money and influence.

Europe is a club which was formed by group of friends, all shopkeepers, who decided to kiss and make up after they got into a big fight with each other, a fight called World War Two. As wise friends do, they decided to stop the blame game over who started it and help each other in the future. Germany and France were the two friends who were most motivated by the idea, although there were a few hangers-on such as Belgium and Luxembourg. They didn't have any choice anyway, as they were not big enough to stand up to the big two's hectoring tactics.

Then, one day, in walked Britain. "Hey" he said, "I was in the fight too, so can I join?" But Germany and France, fearing that Britain would want to dominate and steal all the sweets, said no, so Britain stood outside, sulked, and kept asking to join for years. France in particular was against the idea because he had strong suspicions that Britain would try to woo Germany away from his best friend.

Germany and France finally decided to relent however, particularly as Britain was quite a large man with a lot of big friends, including the USA, who was the biggest guy on the block. So that's why Britain was allowed to join, although they weren't allowed into club meetings which decide things, which really meant that Germany and France decided things on their own and the rest usually followed suit, although there was a fair bit of arm-twisting and ear-tweaking doled out to recalcitrants.

Later on the big two fell in love and decided to announce their engagement, which they called their 'special relationship'. France was particularly proud of this because it was well known that Germany was the most sought-after girl in Europe. Germany was rather more discreet about it however because she didn't want to offend anyone. At the same time their circle of friends got bigger, their new friends joined the club - now called the 'EU' - and they decided to buy from each other's shops as much as possible. This plan worked well, and as is only normal, the fiancés bought more from each other than they did from anyone else.

Both the club and the couple had spats from time to time, as all people do, and the biggest spat began three years ago when Greece, Ireland and Spain got into trouble with the others for spending too much of the subscription money. They were told to pay it back or leave and are doing their best to do so and atone for their profligate behaviour.

It is now exactly 50 years since Germany and France announced their engagement and over the years it has almost seemed at times as if they were married. They were very close to each other and agreed on nearly everything. But things were not as they seemed, as is often the case with couples, and they began bickering seriously about six months ago, with Germany saying that France should go out and work more and spend less to reduce his large overdraft at the bank and that if he didn't mend his ways he'd end up like the Greeks "and we don't want that now do we!?" France was annoyed at this rebuke because he knew that Britain agreed with Germany and would try and exploit the situation.

And talking of Britain, what had he been up to all this time? Was he still sulking? Well, he was, but he had also hatched a dastardly plot to win back Germany's favours. Although not a full member of the club - he didn't even use the same Monopoly money as everyone else - he had placed his agents in all its committees and they ended up running its essential functions such as how to fight noisy neighbours like Serbia. He couldn't do it on his own however but he asked his own 'special friend', big boy USA, to help him and the club. Britain was becoming so influential that he had even been heard saying to a friend in the pub that 'I don't want to be a member of Europe, I want to run it.'

He then used strong-arm tactics to get things done his way and he recently threatened to leave the club altogether if he didn't.

And it was under this cloud that Germany and France put on as brave a face as they could yesterday and celebrated their 50th anniversary. It was a good party, but everyone knew that the old sparkle and fire of love had gone.

But very bad news was about to come for France, and come it did just after yesterday's party had ended when everybody found out that Germany had been, if not unfaithful to France, rather devious. Instead of helping France by buying even more from his shop he began to buy enormous quantities of sweets at Britain's shop instead. Worse, Britain had reciprocated and we now know that they have exchanged so much that Britain has replaced France as Germany's biggest trade partner!

Yes children, Germany has come clean and said that she and Britain bought a record 153 billion euros worth of goodies from each other in the first nine months of last year, that their exchanges are booming at double-digit rates and that their trade relationship is the fastest growing in the world. France was shocked to learn that he was no longer Germany's preferred shop. Not only that, Germany seems to have been spending less within the club in general. She used to buy 46% of her needs from the club in 1999, but that percentage has gone down to just 37% today because she has begun flirting with not only Britain, but young and ambitious Asia too.

France is now very angry indeed and, in an attempt to reduce Britain's increasing influence over Germany, said early today that if Britain wanted to leave Europe then he wasn't going to stop him and would even roll a red carpet out for him to leave on.

But that tactic backfired just a couple of hours later when Germany, a strong-willed woman, got annoyed when she heard about her partner's petulance and said that unlike France she wants to talk to Britain in order to smooth out all the problems, find a compromise and persuade him to stay because he is strong, and as such is a useful guy to have around.

Nobody knows how the story ends, because the end hasn't been written yet, but the last news was that France is fuming, Britain is as pleased as punch, and Germany is as pissed off as can be at her two childish and unruly suitors.
----------------------

So I hope you enjoyed that story children, and the moral is twofold - you can never really trust your friends, and Europe is a shambles because it bickers even more than you do in class or in the playground. But at least you have the excuse of being children, whereas adults have none whatsoever.....