By Abigail Pennson, our reasonable, plain-speaking middle-class columnist who thinks Legionella is too good for them

WE pretend there are other explanations. Weather, the Labour party, Millennials, etcetera. But, you, I and everyone knows all Britain’s problems are down to the French. 

Whether they’re burning sheep and lobbing them at British holidaymakers with a trebuchet, forcing us to have the Chunnel because they think it’s sexy, or refusing to take asylum seekers that are their fault, it’s always the bloody French.

This is a nation so ridiculous it genders spoons as female and whisks as male. That puts garlic in coffee and gives bread its own shop. That is so filthy it invented the arse-washing machine. And they think they’re better than us?

Let’s be clear, France: the small boats are your fault. We know how vicious your gendarmes are. If this was an outer arrondissement of Paris, they’d be clubbed down in the streets before you could say ‘brûle ma voiture’.

But on the beaches? They’re waved off to Dover with a cheery ‘au reviour’ and a gift of stinking cheese as if they were in some way our problem.

Well, Rishi can’t solve the small boats. We all know it. Like Napoleon, he’s simply too small a man to be taken seriously. But he can do what prime ministers have been doing for centuries, and blame France.

Nobody will doubt him. ‘The French?’ Britain will say. ‘I knew it!’ We’re well aware of how they resent Brexit for breaking us free from their slimy, Gauloise-reeking, buttock-groping embrace.

Inflation? Their fault. The NHS? Undermined by their dependence on it to treat sexual injuries. Energy bills? Frog-owned utilities. Mortgages? It’s even a French word.

Blame every problem on those cross-channel bastards and the next election’s a Tory landslide. Followed by what we all know we want deep down. War.