At G-20 summit, British tabloids take their shots at Sarkozy and Merkel

If there’s one thing that British tabloids disdain more than the French, it’s the Germans.

So when the leaders of France and Germany banded together this week to offer their kinder, gentler alternative to Anglo-American capitalism, lips smacked audibly here at the prospect of 2-for-1 night at the Euro-bash buffet.

They may have refrained from the open name-calling of years past, but the tabloids took aim nonetheless at French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“What a pair of sourpusses,” said the Daily Express in an editorial Thursday on the two leaders’ joint news conference outlining their expectations of the Group of 20 economic summit. Sarkozy and Merkel promised to “speak with one voice” at the meeting, and most of what they said together Wednesday threw cold water on President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s call for bigger fiscal stimulus packages.

“Seldom has such a sour performance been put on by visiting dignitaries,” the Express said. “Instead of uniting with other world leaders, they poured out their bile toward the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ economic model. They dream of making Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels the world’s predominant financial centers.”

Of course, pouring out bile is an activity that Britain’s notorious tabloid press is well acquainted with. None of them makes any pretense of unbiased reporting, but their combined readership is in the millions, outstripping that of the “respectable papers.”

For the Daily Mail, Sarkozy and Merkel’s joint appearance at a posh London hotel was “provocative” and represented “an extraordinary attempt to hijack” Thursday’s summit.

Never mind that the two lead the biggest economies of all the countries that use the euro for currency, or that their call for greater regulation of global finance is one that resonates with countless Europeans as well as others who find capitalism’s recent excesses abhorrent.

Sarkozy and Merkel, the Mail accused, were intent on feeding the “bureaucracy junkies” in Brussels, where the European Union has its headquarters. And Merkel, the paper declared, might “live to rue the day” she refused to fatten Germany’s fiscal stimulus package.

To be fair, besides nasty foreigners, the tabloids also enjoy dissing Brown, who is faring poorly in the polls. This time, they sniped at the low wattage of Brown’s star power next to Obama’s.

Readers of the Daily Star who managed to thumb past the photo of a well-endowed topless model on Page 3 were treated to a description of how Britain’s “crawling prime minister tried to capitalize on his counterpart’s popularity in the desperate hope that some of his gloss would rub off on him.”

An accompanying cartoon showed Brown unfurling an enormous tongue for Obama to walk on, with the American president declaring in surprise, “Normally they just roll out the red carpet!”

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henry.chu@latimes.com