Only France would try to blow up the Brexit talks

That France was the country to throw a grenade threatening to blow up the UK-EU trade talks just as they were about to pass the finish line, does not come as a surprise to seasoned euro-watchers.

No other EU member would so brazenly promote its own domestic self-interest at the cost to other EU members such as Germany and Ireland. To the British it has echoes of de Gaulle saying ‘non’, when vetoing the UK’s first attempts to join the Common Market.

Many of the EU’s problems and (in my view) the ultimate reason Brexit happened, is down to a fundamental cause that is little remarked on in the UK. France is a wonderful country with wonderful people and culture (as well as landscapes and food and weather) but it has the most brazenly nationalist political culture in Western Europe. Its political class have no shame in seeing their national mission as the restoration of the historic glory France enjoyed two centuries ago.