Vintage

Sarko’s Secret Plan

Baroness Ashton, who today takes up office as the Union’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy under the Lisbon Treaty, could do no better than study the life of another of her noble predecessors on the European stage – that of the Prince de Talleyrand-Perigord, Foreign Minister of the French Empire and architect not just of much of the present French state, but of much of present inter-European relations as well.

An aristocrat who served Louis XVI, the Directory, Napoleon, the Allies, the restored Bourbons and finally King Louis – Phillipe, no-one could claim to be a better survivor. But the twists, turns and accommodations that his tortuous life entailed, have left him a detested figure in much of France. Which is rather sad when you consider that but for his efforts to have it restored, the Tricolour might have flown for the last time at Waterloo.

Talleyrand’s negotiating skills were supreme: France even came out of the defeat of Napoleon, thanks to his negotiation, with more territory than she had had at the beginning.

But his crowning triumph, achieved when he was already into his ninth decade and on his final mission as Ambassador to Britain in the 1830s, was finally to align British and French foreign policy and to set it on the course that would result in the ‘entente cordiale’ and an unbreakable alliance that later survived two world wars.

That he should have done so in the aftermath of twenty years of bloody war with Britain’s traditional enemy, when Germany was the rising nation in Europe and when even the household language of the British court was German, should be enough to make any aspiring diplomat go weak at the knees with admiration.

Asked what had driven him throughout his long and turbulent life, he said that he had always acted in the best interests of Europe, believing that what was good for Europe would also be good for France and that what was good for France was also good for Europe.

Nevertheless, if Talleyrand is generally despised by today’s French politicians, his famous dictum seems still to be imbibed with their mothers’ milk. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the whole European construction, certainly in France’s eyes, turns on this very premise.

This is not necessarily something to be regretted, still less opposed. From a British perspective what is good for Europe can also be good for Britain. We too, in our own way, have wanted to civilise the world. So the French motivation is not necessarily something to fear, just to be aware of.

With that in mind – and if it is not too much of a bother – let us return to the much tilled ground of the Lisbon appointments. You remember that the initial reaction from the commentariat was astonishment when we learned that two relatively unknown figures – Mr van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton, had been appointed.

This astonishment was certainly real enough: we had been led towards thinking that while one group of politicians did indeed want a low key President of the European Council, others wanted a strong campaigning figure such as Tony Blair, who, at various times, was espoused by a raft of senior European leaders, including President Sarkozy of France.

Indeed, even as late as 19th June, and after he had dropped his support for Blair, Sarkozy was still saying: “…if we have Lisbon I’d like the first President of the Council to be someone strong and ambitious for Europe because Europe deserves and needs such a person.”

Once the Lisbon appointments had been made, however, the commentariat rapidly switched tack, arguing that no-one had wanted strong figures in these roles, that France and Germany did not want their national prestige usurped by some traffic-stopping figure; that what was required was a back room person, an organiser. And on the foreign policy side, someone who would not make waves.

I am still wondering whether this is correct. Has the leopard really changed his spots?

You remember Sarkozy’s French Presidency? (More Sarkozy’s than French you might think). The lavish expenditures, the rushing around all over the world waving the European flag. The frenetic pace continuing right to the very last day and last hour of the Presidency, trying to show what might be done, what ought to be done, with French leadership.

Put this together with Mr Barroso’s second Commission, now assembled. Its composition is very much in the French interest. The wings of free market liberalism - something for which Barroso’s first Commission was roundly criticised for embracing too closely - are now almost certain to be clipped. Agriculture, too, so important to France, is in safe and friendly hands. In Pierre de Boissieu, France has also secured the Secretary-Generalship of the Council.

Consider also that Sarkozy, has been careful to stress that Mr van Rompuy’s appointment as Council President is for two and a half years. Of course the appointment can be renewed for a further term when in comes to an end in May 2012. That is, if the member states so wish.

But whose term of office expires in April 2012? None other than Mr Sarkozy’s! Should he not stand again for the French Presidency, the Presidency of Europe - the ‘strong and ambitious’ figure that Europe ‘deserves and needs,’ could be his. Why not?

Fifteen years ago a newspaper cartoon from the dying days of the government of Edouard Balladur pictured the French cabinet as if in a game of Cluedo. Every minister was depicted as attacking another. Each was being shot, stabbed, clubbed, poisoned or strangled by a colleague. Meanwhile, through a window, we see Sarkozy, retreating from this mayhem with a gleeful smile.

Sarkozy’s volte-face, first supporting Tony Blair, then abandoning him, now becomes explicable. Britain is palmed off with the foreign minister post – which is not important because, should Sarkozy indeed become President of the Council, he will want to play the chief diplomatic role himself. Skilful, very skilful. Worthy of Talleyrand himself.

Talleyrand also said, memorably, that zeal was the enemy of diplomacy. That the best things came to he who waited. I am wondering whether Sarkozy has learned this injunction too; whether Mr van Rompuy is no more than his stalking horse. Having got his Commission ducks in order and disarmed his possible opponents, will Sarkozy now descend in two and a half years time to claim what he regards as his (and France’s) inheritance?