Macron's puerile SimEU

The extraordinary document that emerged from the Élysée on Monday night was at first glance in-credible. I thought it was a clever spoof. But no. It seems that M.Macron had kissed his grannie good morning, scoffed his croissant and sat himself down at the big gold desk in his Palace and built his own fantasy SimEU.

Here is the barracks with the SimEU army, here the detention prison of the SimEU Office of Internal Security; here is the SimEU Central Bank and the SimEU Ministry of Finance. And the whole thing populated by busy and happy little SimEU citizens playing safely on social media regulated by the SimEU Prefecture for Internet Safety, after a hard day’s work inventing innovative new Euro things at the SimEU Creative Foundation.

Really, I’m hardly joking. The whole document, of which he is inordinately proud, reads just like a teenage boy’s fantasy world. The document even has the Heroes of SimEU, the French and German Leaders, waving graciously from the balconies of their SimEU palaces at crowds of adoring SimEU citizens.

He even addressed it to the “Citoyens d’Europe” despite the Federacy having only 61% of the continent’s population under its flag. This degree of self-delusion was not lost on Henry Newman, who replied to Macron via his Telegraph column

I was struck that your letter largely conflates Europe with the EU, eliding the distinction between a political union of 27 members and the broader concerns of our continent which includes proud nations such as Switzerland, Norway and – soon – the UK, which are friends and allies of the EU but outside of that political bloc. Your letter has various suggestions for improving the EU. Some may be welcome, others less so. But each proposal involves the EU gaining further powers and greater influence over people’s lives, at the expense of sovereign states, when we both know that right across the bloc a strong majority want the EU to do the precise opposite. For you, it seems the answer to every question is always more Brussels.

Had this letter been written and published in the late 1990s, at the heights of EU hubris, before the foundations of the Federacy started to show cracks, it might, just might, have been hailed as a visionary manifesto for an ideal EU Central State, authoritarian but benign. But we’re now in the second decade of the following century, the UK has left and the remaining 27 are split on everything from migration to finance, the currency is tanking, the economy is sclerotic and the streets are filled with tear gas and blinded Gilets jaunes.

That the President of France is so deluded, so out of touch with the reality of political possibility, so unrealistic about his expectations is of deep concern. Our teenage fantasist really believes he can secure a date with Jennifer Aniston.