IT’S NEVER a problem telling the French that they are being ridiculous, and now the absurd Agnes Catherine Poirier, a London correspondent of Libération newspaper, has made the task even easier. Mme Poirier has been lecturing us on the “inherent weakness” of British multiculturalism, which she says has led us to cherish fundamentalist fanatics and suicide bombers in our bosom.

In an article in the Evening Standard headlined “When Will You Brits Wake Up?” Mme Poirier, who is writing a book called Les Nouveaux Anglais: Revisited Clichés, says: “As for national values, the British need to realise that a vague attachment to fair play won’t get them far.”

With the sanctimonious French superiority that the British find more maddening even than the squeak of warm polystyrene, she suggested we learn from the French model of class genocide in a bloody revolution, leading to a new social order dedicated to individual freedom. Within clear limits, of course.

Well, excusez-moi, Mme Poirier, but have liberté, egalité, fraternité really created a uniquely tolerant society? The country with the biggest far-right party in Europe, whose leader polled nearly five million votes in the past presidential election, and where the Mayor of Vitrolles in 2001 offered a 500F bounty for every baby born to white couple? True, it’s also the country that succoured Ayatollah Khomeni while he reinvented Islamic fundamentalism, but I’ll stick with muddleheaded British multiculturalism. It’s got us far enough.

Mme Poirier isn’t alone in her opinions; since the July 7 bombings I have heard many English voices claiming that we need to get tough with murderous mullahs and ungrateful welfare claimants. It took our own fascists, the British National Party, only a couple of days to slap that tragic image of the sardine-canned London bus on to their election leaflets in Barking.

Yes, we could be more assertive about our national values, democracy and free speech among them. We could be prouder of our messy, soft-hearted pragmatism and our Betsy Trotwood inclination to take in the world’s orphans, even if one in a million turns against us. We could be specially proud of diverse, united London. And we could suggest that Libération dispatch Mme Poirier to Vitrolles: she’s obviously been away from home too long.