Bullying Macron is just fishing for votes

ANYBODY who had a shiver of nerves when our country voted to leave the European Union in 2016 will look at France’s bullying behaviour and feel a wave of relief that we are out of this club.

It is outrageous that President Emmanuel Macron is indulging in an ostentatious sulk over fishing licences at a time when France and the UK ought to be in lockstep in efforts to persuade the world’s richest nations to take courageous action to limit the rise in global temperatures.

World leaders are preparing for crunch talks at Glasgow’s COP26. Slowing climate change will require brave leadership and difficult decisions, but Mr Macron is setting a dire example.

France’s threats to bar British vessels from ports, intensify border checks and potentially disrupt energy supplies to Jersey are a naked attempt by a rattled president to boost his re-election chances.

It is disgusting that anyone would contemplate damaging trade between allies when people of each nation are working hard to revive their economies after the horrors of the pandemic.

The French elite are clearly furious that we dared snatch back our sovereignty and do not want us to reap the benefits of life free of the EU bureaucracy.

Worse than that, they are determined to send a message to the millions of people in EU member states who would love to escape the clutches of Brussels that life outside the union is miserable.

An increasingly foolish-looking France risks doing the opposite.the spectacle of a free and flourishing Britain may encourage legions of Europeans to pursue dreams of liberation.