France Not Exiting EU

A number of right-leaning papers that hate the EU with a passion sufficient to, er, sell more newspapers have long been peddling stories suggesting that the entire European project is in trouble, or that one or more countries is about to leave the Eurozone and re-establish a national currency. Sadly for the hacks and their editors, the prophecy is never fulfilled.

And today’s Ron Hopeful will find that his agenda driven fantasy will not come to pass either: step forward Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who has contributed his second piece on the potential French exit from either the EU, Eurozone, or both, which he calls Frexit, a term not to be confused with moderately priced Spanish sparkling wine. A “Frexit” is not going to happen.

That, however, does not deter Evans-Pritchard, who has form on the EU and the Euro, being strongly opposed to both. In his case, this has resulted in the projection of his viewpoint so that his copy becomes the fulfilment of his dreams, rather than reporting on the reality. The latest manifestation of this malaise came last week after there had been a by-election in the south of France.

This had been won by the Front National (FN), nowadays led by Marine le Pen, an admittedly more marketable politician than her father who preceded her as head of the party. Because the FN is anti-EU and anti-Euro, Evans-Pritchard has extrapolated from this one by-election and concluded that Ms le Pen is on her way to the Elysée Palace, with his dreamed-of “Frexit” following.

Sadly, this is complete crap, as by-election results in the UK have all too often shown. But Evans-Pritchard has clearly not been downhearted at the sight of even Telegraph readers telling him he’s having a laugh, returning to the subject today and declaring that “Frexit fever reaches heart of French establishment”. Sadly for him, no such event has taken place.

The “fever” of which he speaks is a book written by someone who Evans-Pritchard introduces as a “federalist”, saying that he is part of the French establishment. So one of the “French establishment” has views which might not concur with everyone else. Big deal.  Then, after a long, tedious and rambling succession of supporting paragraphs, he tells us that he’s reading another anti-EU book next.

All of which gives the game away somewhat: Evans-Pritchard reads material which tells him what he wants to hear, rather than looking at reality. The reality is that the only ones taking notice are the likes of Max Keiser and his pals. If Keiser, an accomplished exponent of the drive-by e-shooting, is your only constituency, you have serious credibility problems.

Perhaps someone at the Tel should let Evans-Pritchard know, and soon.

Any source