Bonjour, mes amis

There are days I worry about getting up because I think I might laugh so much I will fall over and do myself damage. Today was one of them.
The Conservative Party has been afloat on a tsunami of anti-European sentiment for almost two decades. The new intake of Tory MPs is, with a few honourable exceptions, violently against the EU. It is hard to find party members who don't think we would be better off out, though why they don't in that case go and join UKIP or the BNP I have no idea.
Yet David Cameron, the great anti-European, his foreign secretary William Hague, an even bigger Europhobe, and the defence secretary, the greatest EU hater of them all, Liam Fox, have signed us up for a military pact with the French.
Even without the pressure of the cuts to our defence budget, that would be a sensible thing to do. We and the French are neighbours with much the same interests and have been on the same side (militarily at least) for getting on for two centuries.
The talk of giving up our sovereignty is rubbish. We have been content to give it up to the Americans in NATO since the end of the Second World War (and during the latter stages of the war - it was Eisenhower who commanded Allied forces at D-Day and beyond).
Don't believe the nonsense in some of today's papers. The SAS aren't going to become garlic-chewing, beret-wearing Froggies who won't go on some dangerous mission because they have to finish their cognac.
The pact with the French is good for this country - militarily and economically.