Le Chagrin et la Pitié

French resentment at Britain's refusal to surrender to Hitler, de Gaulle or the Nazi-Soviet commissars of Strasbrussels has once again erupted in an unseemly diplomatic row over the behaviour of Britain's most famous penal colony. The new Triple Alliance against the Heathen Chinee was accompanied by the cancellation of an Australian order for French-built submarines and a decision instead to transfer the delaying and cost over-runs to Canberra's new paddling partners in the Pacific play-pool. Certainly Britain's experience in completing the Astute-class vessel should be more than sufficient to qualify it for creating a submarine that can detect Australia, if not the subtler and more enigmatic reaches of the Heathen Chinee homeland. Nevertheless, the perfidious French have contrived to snub Britain by recalling only the American and Australian ambassadors, as if they expected no better where the UK was concerned, and almost as if the doings and undoings of the Carrie Johnson administration simply didn't matter very much.