Letter to the Editor, in response to Denis MacShane’s article on President Jacques Chirac, the Independent, 24 May 2005
As they say, “with friends like these, who needs enemies?”.
Denis MacShane has long pretended to know something about France. A year ago he published an article in Le Figaro under the headline "One hundred reasons why I love France". It was really nothing more than a rehash of threadbare clichés : e.g. the "most beautiful women in the world", "cheese", "pastis", etc. This rather pedestrian flattery might, perhaps, have elicited a wan smile from readers.
Today, however, one cannot but feel sorry for Denis MacShane. His patronising description of French small towns depending on low-cost flights and holidaying Britons for their survival is simply ludicrous.
Denis MacShane writes that the French will be "voting on anything but the EU Constitution". If he knew France as he claims, he would have noticed that books on the EU Constitution have been topping the country’s best-sellers’ lists for weeks. If he knew France, he might have noticed that a truly democratic and passionate debate about the future of the EU is going on across the Channel.
Winston Churchill once said about one of his political opponents: “he has the genius for compressing a minimum of thought into a maximum of words”. Sans commentaire.