Travel chaos? Don’t blame BREXIT , blame France
THe chaos at the Channel ports has nothing to do with Brexit. except it has. But that’s down to France. Don’t take my word for it, just listen to archRemainer Jeremy Hunt.
According to the former Foreign Secretary, the French are determined to punish us for leaving the eU.
Hunt told nick Ferrari on LBC radio: ‘They are furious about Brexit and furious with Boris.
‘There’s a lack of willingness in the French government to be co-operative with Britain in any way at all.’
So Brexit is to blame, but only because France has chosen to play silly beggars. The intolerable queues are the result of deliberate policy decisions taken in Paris. Yesterday, France was saying that all this disruption could be avoided if we ‘rejoined’ the eU’s Schengen free movement zone.
There’s only one problem with that argument: Britain has never been part of Schengen. not that it’s done us much good. Illegal immigration is worse than ever. The French effectively turn a blind eye to cross-Channel trafficking.
Yet when British holidaymakers are headed in the other direction, it’s a different story.
Even though we have always had passport checks when travelling into europe, the French have chosen the peak summer holiday season to manufacture a monumental go-slow.
Ignore the blatant lies about sudden staff shortages. This is
guerrilla warfare, sanctioned by the French government and
cheered on by a pro-eU fifth column here at home.
They hope that by inflicting the maximum possible inconvenience on the British public, we will eventually see the error of our ways and crawl back to Brussels with our tails between our legs, begging to be readmitted to the protectionist club.
Despite his being on the losing side in the referendum and twice rejected in his attempts to become
Prime Minister, Hunt obviously still entertains the fantasy that our future lies within europe’s sclerotic superstate.
Why else would he make excuses for France’s disgraceful behaviour? ‘They think we’ve mucked up their long-term plan for a
united europe and I hope that when we have a new Prime Minister we can have a reset in relations with France and indeed the eU more broadly, so that we can co-operate as good neighbours should,’ Hunt said. So it’s all our fault, is it, Jezza? Since we officially left the eU, we’ve gone out of our way to be good neighbours.
If only the same could be said of our ‘friends’ in europe.
Who was it sent gunboats to the Channel Islands and threatened to cut off electricity supplies?
Who rubbished Britain’s worldbeating Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and tried to rip up the postBrexit trade deal to stop supplies reaching Britain? Who is threatening a trade war, rather than negotiate a sensible solution to the impasse in northern Ireland?
It can’t be a coincidence that at the same time France constructs artificial and unnecessary barriers to British holidaymakers crossing the Channel, the eU has launched not one, but four legal actions against us over the n.I. Protocol.
They can smell weakness in Westminster, as Boris exits stage left — pursued by a bear in the shape of the Commons privileges
committee — and Britain is left rudderless while the Tory party indulges in six weeks of infighting and navel-gazing before choosing a new leader.
And they know they can rely on useful idiots such as Hunt, the BBC and the rest of the recalcitrant Remainiacs to crank up the hysteria and blame it all on our decision to quit the eU.
Up until now, we have been far too docile when it comes to confronting the post-Brexit hostility towards Britain — most of which is
generated by the unelected standing bureaucracy in Brussels and that pipsqueak napoleon wannabe Macron, who fancies himself as emperor of Greater europe.
The truth is that continental europe is a basket case right now, engulfed in an economic and energy crisis, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. A trade war is in nobody’s interest.
But while French intransigence at the border persists, we have a few cards of our own to play.
For instance, why are we still allowing eU citizens to use fasttrack e-gates at airports, when British passport holders are forced to queue for hours to enter the eU via France? That should cease immediately.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves the French are our friends and must be appeased. They have only ever acted in their own self-interest, from that ingrate de Gaulle’s ‘non’ to our joining the Common Market to French farmers burning lorries carrying British lamb exports and French fishermen sabotaging British boats.
Yet still millions of us flock to France every year, beguiled by Mediterranean beaches and idyllic rural villages. Maybe it’s time we started looking farther afield until their government stops treating us with contempt.
One of my favourite quotes comes from the late Arthur Lowe’s second-greatest comic creation after Captain Mainwaring — the grumpy, xenophobic retired businessman Redvers Potter, from the early 1980s Tv series written by Roy Clarke, of Last Of The Summer Wine fame.
‘I love everything French... except the French.’