If you don’t want any more reasons to dislike the French, don’t follow this link: It’s your mess, say French with disdain.

FRANCE has adopted a posture of pained superiority in the face of the torrent of Anglo-Saxon invective flowing its way. Its dismissive tone reflects the view that President Chirac is a rock of sanity while Tony Blair has landed his country in a mess by blindly following the Americans.

“Tony Blair should only blame himself,” Le Figaro said yesterday. Commenting on “Blair’s Iraq Failure”, it added: “In his enthusiasm for the battle between good and evil, he forgot that the bridge between Europe and America cannot be one-way only.”

Mr Blair’s idea of a six-test ultimatum for Baghdad was widely derided as a hopeless ploy by a man in distress. “The British are desperately trying to find elbow-room for themselves and the Americans are refusing to give it to them,” a French diplomat said.

One of those tests — the demand for Saddam Hussein to confess on Iraqi television to hiding weapons of mass destruction — prompted mirth in the Foreign Ministry. …

Capping French glory was the news yesterday that babies in the Arab world were being named “Chirac”, in tribute to the “peace-warrior President”. In 1990, they were being called Saddam, and more recently Osama.