A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.  Of course, France now owes even more than that. To be precise, a colossal €3,228,000,000,000. Up by one trillion euros since the election in 2017 of President Emmanuel Macron, the ‘Mozart of finance’.

A ‘sword of Damocles’, admitted the new French prime minister Michel Barnier on Tuesday in his speech to the National Assembly setting out the programme of his minority government.