M. Montebourg Has Had Second Thoughts ...

... but the Genie is out of the bottle.

On Monday, Arnaud Montebourg, the French Minister for Industrial Recovery, stated that Arcelor Mittal was no longer welcome in France, and accused the steelmaker of "lying" and "disrespecting" the country.

M. Montebourg has since decided that Arcelor Mittal might be welcome in France after all, and French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici has spent some time today trying to bury a truly colossal blunder under a welter of would-be soothing phrases.

Unfortunately, M. Moscovici's description of the possible nationalisation of Arcelor Mittal's Florange Plant as a 'temporary mechanism' is unlikely to prove very soothing to any profitable (and therefore potentially vulnerable) foreign owned business operating in France.

Unfortunately, too, I feel sure that M. Moscovici's assurances - given in Paris to an audience of US and British investors - that his Government has no intention of returning to 'an older way of thinking' or carrying out massive, general, and permanent nationalisations was received with a large degree of politely unspoken but deeply felt scepticism.

The BBC's correspondent in France has reported that business leaders there have expressed concern that the government's rhetoric is undermining confidence in French industry. They might well. It's one thing to let the Genie out of the bottle, but it's quite another thing to try and put it back.

In the meantime, I do sincerely hope and trust that someone had the good sense to apologise for M. Montebourg's intemperate and unjustifiably personal remarks when Mr. Mittal met with M. Hollande today.