Britain and France: the impossible, indispensable relationship

By Bagehot

DAVID Cameron will visit Paris tomorrow for a tense bilateral meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy. Senior officials expect the French president to ask the British prime minister a blunt question: what, David, do you actually want from me, and from Europe just now? That is an almost impossible question to answer. In essence, Britain faces the following scenario as the euro crisis swirls. Egged on by France above all, the 17 countries of the euro zone are planning to try to save their single currency with deeper political and economic integration. Britain thinks that in the short term some sort of deep integration is a necessary condition for saving the euro, and fears the consequences of a euro collapse. But Britain does not want to take part in that integration, will not pay for it, knows that it will be marginalised by it, cannot veto it and probably cannot extract many concessions from the process of creating it. Oh, and deep down the British government does not think it will work.