ninme

This is pretty funny, too:

Telegraph - Hopeful signs from France

he first opinion poll showing French opposition to the European Constitution could be dismissed as an aberration; a second was worrying; the third has sent France’s political elite into a panic. Not only are voters against the treaty, but also support for the “No” campaign has risen to 55 per cent, 14 points ahead of the “Yes” camp. One can almost hear the cry of “Merde!” echoing round the Elysée Palace.

Heh.

We have grown so used to the flow of pro-EU rhetoric from French politicians that we tend to forget that France approved the Maastricht treaty by only the slenderest of margins. Throughout Europe, anti-EU campaigns have tended to gain, not lose, support as a particular referendum approaches; with only nine weeks to go, President Chirac is right to panic.

I’m telling you, it’s a recipe for disaster. I’m sure that’s why Bush is supporting it. He gives Blair a little slack with his people, and he accelerates Europe’s crash & burn so they can get on with behaving like normal countries like they used to.

A “No” vote on May 29 would solve so many problems for Britain that it seems almost too much to hope for. Surely the French can be relied upon to let us down. One thing is for sure: the full weight of the Gallic establishment will be deployed in the attempt to bludgeon voters into submission. The BBC’s pro-Brussels sympathies are as nothing compared with those of French television and most newspapers; the state will spend vast sums in the attempt to twist its citizens’ arms. Anything that can be done will be done. But it may not be enough. French voters are in no mood to be addressed de haut en bas: the surge in support for the “No” lobby partly reflects the public’s impatience with the tight-knit Parisian elite, so the propaganda may end up achieving the opposite of what was intended.

Hrmm..

Supporters of the constitution are already busy cobbling together an argument to deploy if the worst should happen. They will interpret a “No” vote as a socialist protest against M Chirac’s Right-wing government, a plea for bigger, not smaller, government. That is a bogus argument. It is true that opposition to the constitution in France is concentrated on the Left, whereas here it is concentrated on the Right. But the differences between the “No” campaigns are less significant than what unites them: a desire on the part of voters to shrug off what the French term “the dictatorship of the technocrats”.

That is so weird. And I can’t believe Chirac can still be called Right.

If M Giscard d’Estaing’s execrable constitutional treaty is rejected by his own countrymen, the European federal project will almost certainly fall apart. The EU will then be able to reconstitute itself along more modest lines that are better suited to the complexities of a global free market. Will the French come to our rescue? On verra.

Well, that would be convenient.