Hello, Sailor

Up got the Eurofanatical Henry Jackson Society stalwart Denis MacShane at PMQs, to crow about the French re-accession to NATO, thereby giving Brown an opportunity to "deny" that there was any "plan" to merge the Royal and French Navies.

Well, there probably isn't. There is now so little to the Royal Navy that a merger could not happen. Rather, there would be a simple takeover, as part of a French-dominated single EU "capability" under overall American command, much as the US has wanted ever since the Forties.

In the pre-Sarkozy days when the Henry Jackson Society's Statement of Principles was being drafted, it was assumed that America's regent in Europe would be Atlanticist, if moderately armed and non-nuclear, Germany. But in the new Sarkozy Age, that distinction now goes to heavily armed and very definitely nuclear France instead.

Also part of this grand scheme, by the way, is the abolition of the Royal Air Force.