BY CHARLES LOUIS PHILIPPE HENRI, IN PARIS

AN ANONYMOUS ENGLISH civil servant has revealed what many have always believed: the French run everything.

In a private email, the Mandarin said that no matter who seems to be in charge, the French always appear to be pulling the strings.

“They have a superiority that just cannot be bested,” the message says. “Their food, their fashion, their wine, their language, it all pours into world affairs with a dominance that makes the rest of us seem cheap. And what’s worse is, the French know it. What’s English but a dialect of French, what’s Britain but an old French colony? What’s Germany but a crude France? Think about the survival of Quebec. And there’d be no United States of America without France. They still have an empire in Africa and a presence in the South Pacific and South America. Go anywhere the French have been and their culture is still present. What is the European Union but a French club? That was the real reason for Brexit. That realization that the UK was in a club dominated by France. It’s one thing being their illegitimate child, quite another being in their service. How many French people own holiday homes in England? How many French people retire to Wales? Or Scotland. Strangely, Ireland does attract them. Perhaps the Gallic relationship. Lingua Franca, the metric system, moving pictures, all pioneered in France. Napoleon got to Moscow. Okay, he lost but be had a lot further to travel than the Germans and he did it a century and half before them and they didn’t get to Moscow. Their national anthem is the best in the world. Their existential literature and art house cinema tore a hold in the world. All I can do is raise a glass of champagne and slice off some Camembert and whisper ‘Vive La France’.”