What is motivating Macron’s self-destructive Brexit position?

As France prepared to go to the polls in the Spring of 2017, it was already probable that Emmanuel Macron would become president, and that would not be good news for Brexiting Britain. That anybody was shocked that Macron led the autodafé of Theresa May at the European council in Salzburg last week is therefore itself shocking. Most appalling of all is that Mrs May walked straight into it.

After he was elected president of France on the seventh of May last year, aged 39 3/4, Macron proclaimed his role model to be Jupiter, king of the gods. And by Jupiter! With his enormous parliamentary majority, subservient government, crushed opposition, and the hyperactive employment of the presidential jets, he took on not just the root and branch reform of France, but also that of the European Union, proposing deepening fiscal and defence links, with French leadership assumed, while incidentally cosying up to Donald Trump.