Maybe ‘storm in a teacup’, ‘mountain out of a molehill’ and other such phrases should be used, but nevertheless, Jacques Chirac’s mildly xenophobic comments against both the British and the Finnish (whatever the context) were probably unwise.

Jacques Chirac joked with German and Russian leaders: “One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad.”

Mr Chirac also reportedly said Britain had the worst food after Finland.

I expect they were meant to be light-hearted words, but the fact is that when you are in a position of leadership, particularly at a time as important and public as an international summit, your every word will be scrutinised.

Tony Blair sensibly refused to be drawn into this argument, despite British media backlash against Mr Chirac:

As the G8 summit nears, Mr Blair said: “The G8 is going to focus on really important issues and to be quite honest I’m not going to disparage anybody.”

“What I’m concentrating on in the next few hours and days is to do our level best to support this bid and then have a G8 focused on Africa and climate change and everything else comes a long, long way behind those things.”

What has happened is that a national leader has paiinted an entire nation as untrustworthy based on their food. As I’ve mentioned before, “trust” is not something that should be toyed with.

At best, it’s a stupid thing to say for someone in a position of power, and not a great start to the week’s proceedings, particularly when there are very important things to discuss and resolve, not least involving nations for whom any reliable supply of wholseome food would be welcome.

Read full article at BBC: Blair sidesteps French food fight