We French hate the perfidious English.  We French have always hated the perfidious English.  We French hate the perfidious English for being … perfidious.  And English.  And for positively refusing to be invaded by Germans when we French managed it so effortlessly.  Twice.  And for letting us deceive ourselves that all those English SOE agents running around organising Le Resistance were … French.  Unacceptable.  And then, mon Dieu, there was Waterloo … Trafalgar … Agincourt … the ‘andbag of Madame Thatcher …

Entente cordial?  Never.  A ridiculous, impossible idea.

Ah, but we French used to love “Europe” before the English insinuated themselves into it.  It was the very essence of French dirigisme.  And OK, Germany was the economic engine.  But France held the political power.  That was the deal.  The English, of course, were not included.  That was also the deal.  Anyway, they had their “special relationship” with the Americans.  But that didn’t worry us.  We French hated the Americans.

So everything was magnifique.  And then, one day, the hated English decided that the Americans were no longer enough for them.  They wanted everything.  Specifically, they wanted to undo France’s political hegemony in Europe.  It had to be that - had to be political - because there was no chance whatsoever that “the sick man of Europe” could seriously challenge Kraut industrial might.  So, there it was again, just like in the bad old days.  The perfidous English wanted to play their power games, and as always they wanted to do it at French expense.  They wanted to join our “Common Market”.

At first their advances could be rejected, and with what delicious affrontery.  The great French leader, who bitterly hated the English, said, “Ici on parle Français.”  That, for non-French speakers means, “I hate the perfidious English more than I can tell you, more than I can bear.  And because I, the greatest and possible the tallest Frenchman ever to have lived (including that little runt from Corsica), had to endure the humiliation of living for five long years in Stourport-on-Severn – a small and disgustingly damp, typically provincial, typically English town - and because the English behaved towards me with intolerable public-school charm and benevolence no matter how blatently I insulted them, I now grasp this opportunity gladly and with all the gratuitous rudeness I can muster to say, “Non, non, non.””

But not even this stopped the English, so perfidious were they.  Perfidiously, the bastards applied to join “Europe” all over again.  Even though they had a man with a foolish nose and a terrible French accent for a Prime Minister, this time it was not so easy to turn them down.  Indeed, this time they could not be turned down.  And there began the decline of La France en l’Europe.  There began the long and depressing, inevitable process of European Anglicisation, of the intrusion into European affairs of the English point of view and of that disgusting American invention, the market.

But not even the most paranoid and Anglo-phobic habitué of our Quai d’Orsay could have guessed how bad it would become and where it would all lead.  But of course, Sunday, May 29th … the day the English beat us yet again!  The day the great Constitution of Giscard, Monsieur La France himself, the finest practitioner and the very symbol of French political elitism, was made forever untenable by … Englishness.

Naturally, good French men and women couldn’t live with this Englishness.  Voila, they voted the Constitution down.  True, one or two not so good French men and women couldn’t live with its elitism, and so they voted it down too.  Well, let us be honest.  Let us be open and sincere.  Yes, sincere.  There were not many of them.  No, no, we of the elite can certainly ignore them.  We can find a way around all this.  We will not allow ourselves to become mired in blame.  Not with the perfidious English just twenty-two of their miles away.  We must blame them.  We will blame them.  Comme d’habitude.

It’s only a pity we cannot find a way to blame the Americans, too.