Ce que je redis au peuple fran

The trouble with a referendum, as Kenneth Clarke noted, is that people do not always answer the question you ask them. You want to know if they favour a bimetallistic approach to the currency, and they say ‘Throw the rascals out.’ Something of the sort may be happening to Jacques Chirac. He had the French all geared up to vote for Europe’s new constitution, the polls are now running against him, but it may be that the voters have tired of a President who keeps flying off to Japan to watch the sumo wrestling. Even so, a Non vote next month would halt the constitution in its tracks, and would not say much for Europe’s confidence in its structures, current and proposed. Last month another structure came apart. This was the Stability and Growth Pact, which was supposed to set limits to European governments’ capacity to borrow. It could be used to bully minor players like Portugal, but when it did not suit France and Germany, they overrode it. In the end all agreed that every country would be allowed its good causes, and that borrowing in support of these causes would somehow not count. This leaf was torn from the Book-Fudgers’ Manual, which teaches shaky companies with flaky auditors how to treat a loss as an exceptional item and leave it out of the profit and loss account. It can be written off below the line. The money, of course, is still lost or, in Europe, still borrowed, and the pact is now a write-off.

Requiescat in pacto

A small group of mourners, long-faced, sober-suited, lament the pact’s passing. These are the central bankers whose countries signed up for the euro. ‘Dismayed’ is the word that Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, found for them. He looks after this country’s currency, but the euro is notoriously a currency without a country, and the pact was the closest it came to a substitute.