“This story will the good man teach his son. And Crispin Crispian will ne”er go by From this day to the ending of the world That we in it shall be remembereth.”
And with those words – embellished and immortalised by Shakespeare – a few brave English soldiers at the command of Henry V went off to win one of the most unlikely victories in military history: the Battle of Agincourt, on a wet St. Crispin”s Day morning, October 25, 1415.
Whether Anglo-French relations have improved since then is a moot point. We don”t fight wars anymore of course, but we are hardly the best of allies. It is almost impossible to find an Englishman who will say anything nice about the French, at least in public; likewise finding a Frenchman who will eulogise about his brothers across the English Channel is equally difficult. Even when we have fought wars on the same side we have barely tolerated each other, forever threatening to turn our guns on each other.
And yet, in all honesty, we love the French, and the French adore us. The most popular holiday destination for the English is France. The most popular wines in England are French, our most highly respected and imitated food is in fact French. Every year tens of thousands Englishmen purchase homes in France.
Even Henry V was fulsome in his praise of his French opponents; and we should not forget that he was in fact trying to capture huge swathes of French territory, perhaps with his eyes on a holiday home in Deauville. The French in turn visit London in numbers larger even than we visit Paris, and Stratford-upon-Avon, the city where Shakespeare immortalised English victories against the French, can often during high summer feel like Stratford-sur-Avon.
And yet at the same time we detest each other. We detest the French for banning imports of our beef for so long. We detest the French for going on strike just as we try to drive down to our holiday homes in Provence. We detest the French for keeping us out of the EU for so long. We detest the French for being, well, French. And they? They think we are uncultured, uncivilised and poorly behaved louts who really don”t deserve to drink their wines, eat their food and buy their 18th century houses.
What we have, in essence, is the quintessential love/hate relationship.
We couldn”t envisage life without them, but we can”t stand life with them either.
On Sunday, all this could change. If the population of France decides to vote Non in the country”s referendum on adoption of the proposed EU constitution, the English will cheer as loudly as Henry”s band of brothers after victory at Agincourt.
The irony of the EU”s motor, the EU”s champion sticking two collective fingers up at that same institution would be a joy that any Englishman will behold for some time. Yet the irony does not stop there. For while the English are whole heartedly against the idea of any kind of EU constitution on the (very sound) grounds that the EU is not a country or a state and does not need a constitution at all, they seem not to understand that the French will be voting no because the proposed constitution is in fact too, well, English.
You see, the proposed constitution aims to set in stone the very Thatcherite principle of free movement of capital, labour, goods and services, as originally outlined in the Maastricht Single Market Treaty of 1992.
The French, always a bit of a socialist lot, have fiercely resisted all and any attempts by the EU to enforce many elements of that Treaty. While they have not been able to prevent the English buying French homes, they have been skilful in their other manoeuvrings, especially in preventing the movement of labour and services.
Try becoming a ski instructor in France. Try setting up a French radio station that plays only English music. Adoption of the new constitution would at a stroke do away with almost all French prevarication.
The French would have no cards left to play.And that is why they will vote Non. And when they do I will lead the English in their cheers. For while I am an unreconstructed Thatcherite, a lifelong enemy of the French notions of egalite, liberte and outrageously high taxes, I am also a lifelong enemy of the EU in its present form.
Like many Englishmen, I believe in a free market, I believe in the free movement of capital, labour, goods and services, but I do not believe in the Euro, the Common Agricultural Policy, the Social Chapter restricting the right of an Englishman to decide how many hours in a week he works, or any other such socialist nonsense. A French Non will plunge Europe into crisis, and may even lead to a complete rethinking of what the EU actually stands for. It should also – finally and not before time – ignite a debate in Romania on whether Romania”s interests are in fact best served by joining the EU at all. At the very least it may give Romanians a better idea of what the EU is and how it works. That really will be worth cheering about.
* Craig Turp is the Publisher of In Your Pocket