We are all the perfidious Albion

CHARLES BREMNER REPORTS IN the Times (UK):

«Since Mr Blair’s re-election, a new theme has emerged. Perhaps the British model, with its strong growth and unemployment less than half that of France, is desirable after all.
M Sarkozy reassured the audience. “We want a political, integrated Europe.” However, France was bottom of the class in employment and should stop imagining that it provided a model for Europe, he said.

More surprisingly, left-wing media have been abandoning their antipathy to Mr Blair as a “phoney leftist”. Le Nouvel Observateur, weekly bible of the thinking classes, published a series of articles under the headline: Why are the British better than us? “The other side of the Channel is swinging while France is paralysed by a gloom that is spreading across the Continent,” it said.»

And in a thumbnail press roundup:

« “The British miracle should serve us as an example, provided we have the courage to cross the Channel and seek answers . . . to the anaemia of our economy”
— Le Figaro

“Success is not a sin. It is not ideological mimicry to want to follow the example of those i who have managed to find the path to full employment”
— Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of President Chirac’s UMP party

“The constitution is our defence against liberalism (British free-market doctrines)”
— President Chirac

“Approving the constitution means sentencing Europe to the ravages of liberalism, it means opening the door to everything the Anglo-Saxons want”
— Henri Emanuelli, Socialist ‘No’ campaign»

He must mean those filthy, sweaty Visigoths who wake up in the morning and go to work…