The death toll from communism is, roughly speaking, one hundred million people, the number of other victims is, quite literally, countless. Jacques Chirac, however, thinks that free market principles are “the new communism of our age”.

The London Times is not impressed. Chirac’s comments, it said, “will be a surprise to those who had the misfortune to spend time in the labour camps. In reality, what this sad saga and his ludicrous statement illustrate is that Chiracism is the new infantilism of our era. His crass protectionism is naked populism pure and simple. In a similar vein, as part of yet another political tack, he opted yesterday to embrace the cause of poverty in the Third World (as if those souls had not suffered enough) and this despite his unrelenting refusal to contemplate the wholesale overhaul of a Common Agricultural Policy that condemns millions of people there to abject misery.”

Indeed.

Quite why any of the EU’s Eastern European leaders should now want to be in the same room as Chirac now escapes me. He has insulted their history, and belittled the memory of their dead. What a disgrace.