France was stripped of its coveted AAA credit rating last night in a crushing humiliation for President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The downgrade of Europe's second largest economy - along with eight other Eurozone countries - came just a month after a bitter war of words broke out between Paris and London over the relative health of the French and British economies.
The row followed Prime Minister David Cameron’s historic decision to veto a European treaty to deal with the crisis affecting the euro.
Senior French politicians and the country’s top central banker insisted it should be Britain, not France, that should be stripped of the gold-plated AAA rating.
But last night, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s delivered its verdict – and it made dismal reading for Mr Sarkozy ahead of the French presidential election this spring.
The French downgrade by one notch to AA+ was met with muted glee in Downing Street and the Treasury, where officials have grown tired of Mr Sarkozy’s grandstanding over the economy and his attempts to undermine Britain at the EU summit before Christmas.
Allies of the Prime Minister and Chancellor refused to make public comments, but one described a ‘mood of quiet satisfaction’ that Britain’s strategy of announcing spending cuts to reassure the financial markets and the credit ratings agencies ‘has been vindicated’/
