You have to laugh. You really do. I certainly did when I read just yesterday that Michel Barnier had reached the head of the queue to be the new French prime minister.
In the UK, Barnier’s appointment will be seen by many as a deliberate slap in the face by Emmanuel Macron. Not satisfied with taking the millions we give him to prevent the migrant hordes from setting out from Calais and then doing sod-all to actually stop the boats, now the arrogant son-of-a-b*tch is taunting us by appointing the man who bamboozled Boris over Brexit to the number one job in his Cabinet.
What next? Inspector Clouseau as ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s?
But calm down, dear, as Michael Winner liked to say. For this promises to be a pivotal moment in the story of our oldest enemy. Barnier, a Gaullist of the Old School, most recently a centre-right Republican, could, if his luck holds, be the perfect choice for the job given the circumstances. And the circumstances are dire. It is the President’s own fault that, as the arch centrist (“neither right nor left”), he has ended up sandwiched between factions of left and right, both of which insist that they, and they alone, should be entrusted with the governance of France.
