One can always rely on Nicolas Sarkozy to greet the arrival of a new foreign leader with more than mere platitudes about “working together”. So here, according to Le Figaro, are his thoughts on our new Prime Minister:
He’ll start out Eurosceptic and finish up pro-European. It’s the rule. He’ll be like all the others.
One can understand why Sarkozy is so confident. After all, it was a Tory prime minister (Margaret Thatcher) who signed the Single European Act and a Tory prime minister (John Major) who agreed to the Maastricht Treaty.
But while Cameron, a consummate pragmatist, may often appear willing to abandon almost all principle for political convenience, his Euroscepticism, forged in the wake of Black Wednesday, is the one major exception.
I expect that Cameron is likely to bear in mind Tim Montgomerie’s warning: “If Britain’s relationship with the EU is fundamentally the same after five years of Conservative government the internal divisions that ended the last Tory period in government will look like a tea party in comparison.”
If there is one subject that is almost guaranteed to bring Clegg and Cameron’s honeymoon to a juddering halt, it is Europe.
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