In France, the EU is their NHS

The French have, for all intents and purposes, suffocated our Channel ports with a go-slow strike.

Post-Brexit, the French insist on stamping our passports before boarding the Dover ferry or the Folkestone channel train. That obviously requires more border officials to keep the traffic flowing.

However, rather than beefing up their staffs, the French drastically reduced them. That created tailbacks taking from eight to 21 hours to clear. Some inveterate British travellers slept in their cars. Many just turned around and went home cursing a certain species of reptile all the way.

Now, about 200,000 Britons (including us) own houses in France where they spend much of their time. On top of that, millions of British tourists travel there every year.

This creates mighty streams of revenue flowing into France’s coffers, at a time when they aren’t necessarily bursting at the seams. (To give you an idea, Penelope and I spend perhaps £25,000 in France every year, and I’d say we are about average British homeowners.) So why are the French so bloody-minded about this?

Because some things in life are more important than money. One such is religious faith, whether real or of the ersatz secular variety, otherwise known as ideology. People have been known to sacrifice their lives for it, never mind a few million euros here and there.

Blind secular faith allows no exegesis, no heresy, no apostasy. It relies on visceral, gonadic biochemistry, not rational thought.

Now that real religions have lost their street cred, surrogates reign supreme. In Britain, that’s NHS. On the face of it, it’s nothing but a method of financing medical care. As such, it should be compared with other methods, with the pluses and minuses assessed and weighed in a dispassionate manner.

But that doesn’t happen, does it? Like a demiurge, the NHS sits on a lofty moral peak that reason can’t even approach, never mind scale. Otherwise bright people put their intelligence on hold and refuse even to discuss the issue. If you are against the NHS, you aren’t just a chap with an argument. You are a traitor, or else an apostate.

What the NHS is for the British, the EU is for the French. When we first bought our house over 20 years ago, I still tried to argue with our French friends about that wicked contrivance.

It must be said that they are all without exception intelligent, erudite and cultured people. They can put forth a nuanced and rational argument on atomism and Thomism, Bach and Offenbach, the Fifth Republic and the Third Reich, first principles and last things.

Yet try to engage them in a serious discussion of the EU and – whoosh! – their minds fly out and secular piety takes over. You can argue until you are puce in the face that there isn’t a single rational, moral, economic or empirical argument in favour of the EU – they don’t want to know. The EU is a secular god and as such is owed unquestioning, genuflecting devotion. That’s all there is to it.

This mindset explains the spirit of vindictive revanchism wafting through France’s smart salons and government offices. By leaving the EU, Britain didn’t just opt for restoring her ancient sovereignty. She committed apostasy. And apostates must be punished, if only pour encourager les autres.

That’s why the French waited so patiently for the start of the peak holiday season to create a bottleneck at the ports. For punishment to work, it must really hurt.

Their officials don’t even bother to conceal their motives. “If you want a smooth crossing, rejoin the Schengen zone,” they smirk. The blighters don’t even know we were never in it.

Some sort of reciprocal agreement, similar to the one we have with another EU member, Portugal, would be easy to work out. That would benefit both parties, except that one party doesn’t care about benefits. It has to indulge its infantile craving for revenge.

My area of London is crawling with French people, and their number hasn’t noticeably dropped since Brexit. The three French schools around us are still open, and French children still spill out into the neighbourhood parks to kick footballs about. (What’s the French for “On me ‘ed, son”?)

The Kent town of Ashford is still more French than English, what with many Frenchmen opting for British taxes even if they have to catch the Eurostar every morning to go to work in France.

We could, probably should, make life difficult for all of them, in the hope that they’ll put some pressure on their own government to see sense. Oh well, not much chance of that. The British are too docile to retaliate, and the French are too committed to care.

Secular gods are athirst, and they demand sacrifices. One such could well become any goodwill between these two neighbours.