France and Europe. Chirac at bay

The French president blames Britain for the Brussels bust-up

WHEN in trouble, pick a fight with Britain: this is a time-honoured diversionary tactic for any French politician in difficulty. But it is a measure of how deep a hole Jacques Chirac is in that his efforts to blame Britain's Tony Blair for the failure of the European summit have had only equivocal results.

Britain, snapped Mr Chirac, had been “selfish”. The talks' failure, said his spokesman, was down to “British intransigence”. Linking the British budget rebate to reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP), as Mr Blair had done, was “neither legitimate, nor justified”, Mr Chirac added. Traditionally, such a tirade against the British goes down a storm in France. Sure enough, the media that most people get their news from - television and radio - portrayed Mr Blair as summit-wrecker, clinging to his undeserved cheque. Yet the press was more ambivalent. Le Monde wrote of a “double victory for Mr Blair”. Liberation called the summit Europe's Waterloo. Francois Hollande, the Socialist leader, mocked the centre-right president as “a monarch on his last legs”.

Mr Chirac's defence of the CAP is not as misguided a domestic political strategy as many Britons assume. True, only 4% of the French work in agriculture, but there is a strong agri-food industry. And farming looms large in French tradition, from its terroir-based cuisine to its flourishing local markets. According to a recent Ifop poll, 79% of the French consider their farmers to be “modern” and 68% think they are “competitive”. No mainstream politician advocates cuts in farm subsidies. As one deputy from the ruling UMP party puts it, “you can't understand French support for the CAP just by looking at economic statistics”.

It is thus unlikely that the French will budge on CAP reform, certainly in the short run. Indeed, it is precisely Mr Chirac's weakness, after 55% of French voters said no to the EU constitution in their referendum last month, that is putting him on the attack. At home, his popularity has sunk to just 28%, according to an Ifop poll, a dramatic slump from 46% in May. In the same poll, in which he usually occupies one of the top few spots, he now ranks at number 30, below a Trotskyite, a Revolutionary Communist and the Communist Party boss. Abroad too he is on ever shakier ground. Above all, he faces the prospect of a more uncertain alliance with Germany if, as expected, Angela Merkel becomes Germany's chancellor in September.

Nor, especially under a British EU presidency, is Mr Chirac likely to shift from his unyielding defence of the French social model against “ultra-liberal currents”. This is not because the French economy is withstanding them robustly. Thierry Breton, the finance minister, this week revised his growth forecast for 2005 down to 2% at best. Unemployment remains at 10.2%. But the more that Mr Blair talks of the need to face up to globalisation, the more Mr Chirac is inclined to defend social protections as an essential shelter from such cruel torrents. Ministers like Mr Breton may be emerging as a liberaliser, but the government as a whole remains more hesitant. “Globalisation is not an ideal,” declared Dominique de Villepin, the new prime minister, in his inaugural speech. “It cannot be our destiny.”