The Times leader on President Sarkozy’s insistence that the ‘European’ economic model must now prevail over the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model:

This is economically illiterate populism. No policymaker in the English-speaking economies believes in totally unconstrained and unregulated capitalism. You need to go to some fairly obscure corners to find anyone at all who advocates it. In the UK, government takes around 40 per cent of national income in tax, provides social services such as healthcare and universal primary and secondary education, and regulates contracts in the workplace and in the home. That is hardly capitalism red in tooth and claw…

The notion that the French Government should now use the institutions of the EU to rein in the City of London is deeply irresponsible. For reasons of history, language, location and expertise, London specialises in financial services. That is a source of strength for the UK economy, which is an integral part of the European single market. Mr Sarkozy should cease bringing discord where there ought to be harmony.

And the Independent on Iran urges us to ‘stay calm’

The truth is that we don’t really know what Tehran is up to. What we can say is that Iran, so far, remains a member of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and has pledged itself to act according to the law in the case of these sailors.

So long as that is true, we are best keeping calm and giving it the benefit of the doubt. It is a proud and important country and should be treated as such. Empty threats will only serve the purposes of the more oppressive elements in the regime.

What’s wrong with these editorials?

In both cases they appear oblivious of the psychological power-plays going on.

Take President Sarkozy. He engineered an impressive escape for France from the wreckage of their calamitous 2005 EU Constitutional Treaty referendum, not least thanks to Tony Blair. He blithely and foolishly offered France a helping-hand to get back on its feet by pushing through a new EU Budget that year – but getting nothing significant in return. Maybe he expected France’s vote for the new EU President job. Sucker.

With the Lisbon Treaty and all that new EU majority voting coming into focus, Sarkozy feels emboldened to try to press home a psychological advantage over the UK.

Merkel and I are winners, he’s saying. Blair and Brown (and Cameron) are losers. We are strong, I am strong – you are weak. A ‘European’ majority will set the rules now, and the UK is unlikely to be in it. And because we play the EU game more ruthlessly than you do, it will be Paris who shapes and defines that European majority.

Plenty of this is bluff and nonsense. Sarkozy is well aware that the City is a huge European asset, and that he needs to tread carefully. But the key factor is the sense of establishing his psychological leadership – forcing us to react to him, to argue defensively about what he wants to argue about, not what we do.

Part of the answer to that is not to answer it. To point out bluntly instead that thanks in part to the City’s global success, huge nett sums flow from the UK to the EU pot wastefully to help subsidise French farmers, and that that is going to have to stop. And that if he wants to play games with key UK assets, he may face London playing some heavy cards of its own to throw a big spanner in the EU works.

A task for the next UK government – and the next EU Financial Perspective.

As for Iran, the regime there too are playing a psychological game aimed at staking out at a global level a sense of unpredictable Islamic untouchability, a new erratic post-Cold War version of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Which indeed leaves the rest of us baffled as to how best to respond. It is a classic example of the Who Owns What? phenomenon.

On the one hand a dark, unpleasant and menacing force running Tehran which challenges not only individual rules but the very legitimacy of the current rules governing the international space. And which warns (convincingly) that the more it is ‘pressured’, the worse it will behave.

On the other, a whole range of countries rightly anxious about the longer-term trends but putting out uncertain signals on what to do about it.

Not easy. But the tone of the Indy editorial is surely not right either – it exudes a strange post-imperial patronising ‘progressive’ attitude with subliminal racist overtones:

‘These naughty little children have their naughty tantrums – just stay calm and they’ll grow out of it’.

It just sounds Weak.

And if they don’t ‘grow out of it’?