One should always heed lessons taught by experts.
Ignoring them is a sign of arrogant hubris, something that makes real knowledge impossible.
Armed with this wisdom, we should listen closely to my friend Manny Macron when he tells us all he knows about social unrest, which is a lot.
I certainly hung on to his every word the other day, when he explained to me how the world works – or rather should work.
After every sentence, Manny would cast a quick glance at the First Foster Mother, to make certain she approved.
Brigitte, I have to say, looked particularly assertive in her man’s suit (Size 36 Regular). She sat there impassively, occasionally adjusting the cuffs of her shirt to make sure exactly a quarter-inch showed, and smiling indulgently each time she felt her pupil had done well.
Thus reassured, Manny pressed on.
It’s impossible for a society to maintain tranquillity in a country that finds herself outside the EU, he taught.
Thus, if Britain leaves the EU without the kind of exit deal that negates the exit, we must brace ourselves for disturbances, if not for an out-and-out popular uprising.
Every weekend for months our city centres will be gridlocked by hundreds of thousands of protesters wearing funny garments, banging on buckets to produce the mère of all ruckuses, building barricades, ripping cobbles out and using them as projectiles, looting shops, writing graffiti disrespectful of the government and doing all sorts of other disruptive things.
Our police will have to respond with tear gas, baton charges, mass arrests. That will incite the protesters even more and trouble will escalate.
The state of the economy won’t help, what with it constantly teetering at the very edge of recession and tipping over from time to time (de temps en temps). We’ll have to keep raising taxes on fuel and essential services, adding fuel taxes to the fire of riots, as it were.
Meanwhile, our industrial production will go down, as will the people’s living standards.
Heading fast in the opposite direction, however, will be unemployment, especially among the young. Manny could confidently predict it’ll reach 25 per cent, driving millions of young Britons into the ranks of rioters.
The only thing that can save us from such disasters is a continued membership in the EU, in whose loving care Britain will prosper as much as all the other members have. Just look at France and Greece, he said. Nary a protest in sight, with people really having nothing to protest against.
Social cohesion will reign supreme and, if the British ever feel like wearing lurid waistcoats, it’ll be to make a sartorial, rather than a political, statement. Cobbles will remain in the roadways, the police will have no need for tear gas and batons, no barricades will be built.
“Do you think you get zis?” asked Manny at the end. “Well then, make sure to convey zis message to les sales Anglais. EU – social cohesion; no EU – social unrest. And stop wearing zis silly yellow waistcoat, will you? It doesn’t become you.”
I shook hands with the royal, sorry, I mean presidential couple (Brigitte’s handshake was considerably firmer, went well with her suit) and rushed to my computer to do as ordered, sorry, I mean taught.
Along the way I stopped at a huge graffito that goes to show how the French fail to appreciate their regal saviour Manny and, by association, the EU. Bunching Macron together with the quasi-communist Mélenchon and the quasi-fascist Le Pen, it screamed: “Out with all of them!”.
Knowing that you won’t believe people can be so ungrateful after all that Manny has done to, sorry, I mean for them, I asked Penelope to snap the validating picture opposite. Really, there’s no understanding the French.
“Bunching Macron together with the quasi-communist Mélenchon and the quasi-fascist Le Pen, it screamed: ‘Out with all of them!’.”
And what alternative is there? A Don exists among the French?
For many years, France has been governed by either the Gaullists (sort of like our wet Tories) or the Socialists. The graffito mentions neither, so I suppose the writer of it sees one or the other as a good alternative.
A Gaullist. A strong man. The French do love their revolutionary history.
Reading this on my phone I at first thought the inscription read “debaggez vous”. You have to admit that would have been a rather splendid Franglais expression!