Kenny gets his Churchill moment and his own little VE Day

WITH the air of casual racism the French love to deploy against their northern neighbours, Nicolas Sarkozy warned that the European Union was in danger of playing “Belgium roulette” — it’s like Russian roulette, but in this version, all the chambers of the revolver contain a bullet.

Eurozone leaders finally wrestled the gun to the floor yesterday without even performing their customary trick of shooting themselves in the foot.

Tensions were high between Berlin and Paris in the run-up to the summit, with Sarkozy branding Angela Merkel an “aggressive egotist”.

So when a couple of tanks suddenly turned-up outside the Commission headquarters just as news filtered through that the talks had hit deadlock, mild anxiety swept the building — but, thankfully, the Germans were not up to their old tricks again, the heavy armour had just got lost on its way to a parade for Belgium national day. But the military backdrop was apt as Enda Kenny, for so long derided as a Chamberlain figure by — of all the people — the Fianna Fáil IMF surrender monkeys, wanted this to be his Churchill moment.

After putting the Vatican in its place he was now righting the bailout wrongs, as Angela and Sarky finally started pulling the EU back from the brink of financial crisis.

Though it must be said the French president was grudging until the last, insisting the interest rate cut on emergency loans would only apply to Greece at the closing press conference, before being passed a note and hastily adding Ireland to the equation.

But at least Sarkozy treated the occasion with the seriousness it deserved, unlike Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister shambled into the meeting more than an hour late, looking like a refugee from one of his notorious “Bunga Bunga” parties — unfortunate at the best of times, but downright rude considering Italy’s debt fears had plunged the euro into this latest spasm of crisis.

While not quite slummy, the European Commission is hardly in the most salubrious part of town, plonked down next to a four-lane motorway and overlooked by a building site.

It doesn’t feel like the power-crazy hub of what europhobe Margaret Thatcher used to contemptuously dismiss as the Belgium Empire. But the king of the Belgians, Albert II, was on hand nonetheless as he stopped across the road from the building to slip out of his mercedes and into an open top jeep without once glancing in the direction of the HQ.

Maybe he had other things on his mind. His country is in danger of tearing itself apart. And despite the fact that July 21 is national day in Belgium, not that many locals seemed to be celebrating. Which probably isn’t surprising since the French and Flemish blocs really don’t like each other — hence why the country is now in its 14th month without a government. As if all that weren’t enough for the king to be worrying about, one of Belgium’s few cultural achievements, the Smurfs, were recently outed as sporting neo-nazi tendencies in a major study of the little blue creatures by one of France’s top political scientists.

The king got soaked in a sudden downpour, but Mr Kenny must have felt like he was walking on water as the EU finally loosened our financial strait-jacket. Ireland landed a much better deal than the one on the table in March when Mr Kenny had his “Gallic spat” bust-up with both a sarky Sarkozy and ruffled EU president Von Rumpuy. But Enda remained modest to the last, insisting: “I’m not here to seek credit” — an ironic statement really, as credit is the only thing keeping the lights on at home.

Belgium Day may have been a washout, but Enda enjoyed a quiet triumph. Perhaps not quite Churchill, but Kenny certainly had his own Victory in Europe Day nonetheless.