As François Hollande arrived to meet David Cameron in London, the entente was threatening – like the weather – to be less than cordial.
The British prime minister had extended an invitation that the French president could have surely easily refused; not a multi[-]course silver-service banquet à la Elysée Palace, but a pub lunch in Oxfordshire. How Hollande's Gallic heart must have sunk as he crossed the point of no return under the Channel: he may style himself as "Monsieur normal", but he is still the president of France and we can only hope Cameron's local could produce a better glass of red than that available at most of Britain's traditional ale-houses.
If this was not reason enough for Hollande to find a more pressing international crisis demanding his attention, there was what the French media coined in defiance of the country's language police, "le French bashing".
There had been rumours that the French were about to cancel the meeting given the level of sniping from the British side of the Channel. The economics they could discuss and agree to disagree, but the idea that an insolent and disrespectful British press was more interested in the Elysée soap opera involving the president and the actor, thus provoking even more "total indignation" from the already indignant Hollande, was almost too much.
But the Elysée was determined to be grown up about it all. "If we cancelled for that, we'd never have a summit," one presidential adviser told Le Figaro newspaper.
Given the amount of flak that Cameron, his Conservative colleagues and the British media have given the president since he was elected in May 2012, Hollande might have been sorely tempted to give the prime minister a punch on the nose and return to Paris. » | Kim Willsher in Paris | Friday, January 31, 2014
