French president Emmanuel Macron is reported in this week’s Canard Enchaîné – the French equivalent to Private Eye – to have called Boris Johnson a ‘gougnafier’.
Gougnafier is an intriguing term with many linguistic roots. It is a nightmarish word to translate. Can you find one word in English to convey someone both rude and useless? That is what gougnafier means. A gougnafier is a boor. A cock-up artist. Someone vulgar. Someone lacking manners. This wasn’t merely a drive-by insult. It was a carefully judged expression of contempt.
What does this presidential insult say about the degradation of the Anglo-French relationship to Cold War?
Doubtless British and French journalists will have huge fun with this – and that’s the point
It’s easy to dismiss this as another chapter of Macron’s tantrum diplomacy, to which the only dignified response might be to call his latest intervention unhelpful. Or perhaps not. Macron is showing an almost Johnsonian rhetorical skill.
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