What’s the difference between electioneering in the Anglosphere and the Eurosphere? The UPI’s Martin Walker says,

[The] British general election is taking place within the Anglosphere, which is more than just the English-speaking world. It is a place where election campaigns are very similar, where voters respond to similar signals and similar appeals, where the emotional and subliminal languages are almost interchangeable. Countries in the Anglosphere have similar concepts of law, of trial by jury and private property and share some preconceptions about a citizen’s home being his castle and keeping the state in its place. They also share robust attitudes toward the use of military force in the modern world. The Brits, Yanks and Aussies of the Anglosphere were also the only countries whose troops attacked Iraq from day one of the war.

By contrast, the French election is taking place in the Eurosphere. Schroeder’s Germans are urging the French to vote “Yes,” and so is Italy’s former Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who served as the last president of the EU Commission in Brussels. A French “No” vote, Prodi said, would mean “the fall of Europe.” The Netherlands’ former deputy premier Annemarie Jorristma says it is a question of whether “France will do honor or horror to the cause of Europe” and Spain’s prime minister, Jose Luis Zapatero, suggests “a Europe without France in the front rank is unimaginable.”

Chirac, Schroeder, Zapatero and Prodi all, of course, opposed the Iraq war, and all have visibly expressed their discomfort at living in a world dominated by the single American superpower. Similarly, they all want “Europe” to provide a bit of balance and to give them a little room to maneuver, for example, to sell arms to China if they wish, even if the Americans warn them against the idea.

But these European leaders, by definition, are members of the European elite that has consistently promoted and supported the project of European unity and of the new EU constitution. And the real question looming over the French referendum is whether the French voters themselves still feel as pro-European as their leaders, or whether their resentment of their own governing elite in Paris is going to spill over into a rejection of the EU elites in Brussels. The current opinion polls suggest they might do just that, which is why the Eurosphere leaders are all campaigning so hard in France.