The Watermelon Man

Christopher Booker reports an astonishing incident in which Vaclav Klaus was apparently on the receiving end of what can only be described as very nasty personal abuse from Daniel Cohn-Bendit for failing to get with the European program.

If the report is accurate, Cohn-Bendit's behaviour can properly be described as imperial; a very 21st century version of Palmerstonian 'damn your eyes' gunboat diplomacy.

How ironic that this incident should have occurred in Prague, of all places. On 19th March this year, I wrote,

"This year we will see many invocations of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the spirit of 1968; these accounts will probably far outnumber those remembering Alexander Dubcek and the Prague Spring. It will be just like 2006, when British media seemed to contain many more reflections on the collapse of British imperial power at Suez in 1956 than on the Soviet invasion of Hungary - an event which was taking place at the same moment as Suez. "

And so it was; and Cohn-Bendit, the ultimate spoiled baby boomer who grew old without ever growing up, the perpetual student activist and enfant terrible, waves the star-spangled rag that symbolises modern anti-Christian European totalitarianism in the face of a man who saw The Brezhnev Doctrine up close and personal, without reflecting for a second on the absolute impropriety of his actions.

Klaus is reported to have slapped Cohn-Bendit down with the wonderful comment, "You are not on the barricades in Paris here". Yet in one sense Klaus is wrong; for nostalgic and foolish old soixante-huitards like Cohn-Bendit, the barricades in Paris have never come down in their heads, leading them to spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture that shining moment of their gilded youth. The BBC seems to be full of them.

He might not, ahem (COUGH!), have been the, er, cuddliest of Cold Warriors, but the late Roberto d' Aubuisson coined a wonderful expression that fits Greens like Daniel Cohn-Bendit to a tee. D' Aubuisson would have described them as 'watermelons' - green on the outside, red on the inside; and the old sans-culotte Daniel Cohn-Bendit should wear the badge with pride. His thought processes at the age of 63 are the same as they were when he was 23; peace and love, man, and give me what I want.

Plus ca change...