Stephen Pollard

Natacha Bouchart is clear about this. Last week she said that the French police cannot deal with the “uncontrollable” gangs that effectively run the Jungle camp and demanded that President François Hollande send in the army.

As she put it: “It has been over a year since I have been asking for the army to come.” According to Ms Bouchart, President Hollande is uninterested. But instead of dealing with their problem, of their making, in their country, a growing number of French politicians are joining Nicolas Sarkozy in trying to shift the problem to the UK.

Alain Juppé, Mr Sarkozy’s main rival for the right to challenge President Hollande in next year’s presidential election, has also attacked the current arrangement, known as the Le Touquet Accord. As has Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader. And as has Xavier Bertrand, the leader of the northern France region.

As things stand under the 2003 agreement – negotiated by Mr Nicolas Sarkozy when he was interior minister – British border officials are allowed on French soil to carry out checks. Anyone without the right paperwork is refused entry. Those turned away then have to apply for residence in France – in theory, although many remain there illegally.

Last year UK Border Force officials in France caught 84,088 migrants trying to cross the Channel hiding in lorries, cars and trains: one every six minutes. That number has trebled already year on year.

There are reciprocal arrangements in the UK: anyone who has travelled to France on the Eurostar will have had their passport checked by French officials at King’s Cross station in London.

This works in France’s best interests. Without the British officials’ presence in Calais it would be even more of a magnet for migrants to France who were seeking to get to the UK, especially as France has decided to do without border controls. And if Mr Sarkozy’s

USELESS as President Hollande may be, even he sees this. But now that the opening salvoes of the 2017 election campaign are under way his opponents see Brit bashing as electoral gold. President Hollande is doomed to defeat. The issue is which Right-wing candidate will emerge to fight him and Ms Le Pen for the presidency.

This means that the next president is likely to have campaigned to end the Le Touquet Accord. So despite the harm it would do France to end it, this is unlikely to be an issue that will go away.

We must stand firm. Apparently a senior British official has already made a thinly veiled threat: “They depend on us for a lot of security advice and co-operation after the Nice attack. There are other elements in our security relationship that I don’t think they would be interested in having changed.”

Yesterday Home Secretary Amber Rudd met her French counterpart, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve. She made it clear that we will not budge on this. But you can bet this is going to run and run.

‘The French allowed the Jungle to grow’