The EU is backing a belligerent France against us. Yet we still pretend it’s an ally
What foresight! Last year, alarmed by reports that Britain had slipped behind France in the number of its surface vessels, Boris Johnson promised to “restore the United Kingdom’s position as the foremost naval power in Europe”, and announced the construction of dozens more frigates. Who’d have imagined that they might be needed so soon?
There is a Gilbert and Sullivan quality to the quarrel over Jersey scallops, which saw a technical dispute about skippers’ licenses escalate into threats to cut off energy supplies and the deployment of warships. Britain and France often loom in each other’s imagination as cartoonish villains. No politician in either country ever loses votes by insulting the other.
“I do not say, My Lords, that the French will not come,” pronounced Admiral John Jervis during an invasion scare in 1801. “I say only – they will not come by sea.”
At least his quip came during an actual war. Not long afterwards, Britain and France fought their last naval battle. For over two centuries now they have been at peace – allies, indeed, for the greater part of that time. Unless you count the sinking of the Vichyite fleet at Mers el-Kébir in 1940 (a tragic incident, about which the less said the better), no shot has been fired in anger since the time of Bonaparte, whom Emmanuel Macron seems to have adopted as his totem. Yet somehow the rivalry has never faded.
When Palmerston’s French counterpart politely remarked that, had he not been born French, he would wish to have been born British, the patriotic Whig replied: “If I had not been born British – I should wish to have been born British.”
Winston Churchill, a passionate Francophile, once got so frustrated with Charles de Gaulle that he lapsed into furious Franglais: “Mon Général, si vous m’obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai!”
To get a sense of the present relationship, consider that the PM’s new frigates will have their digital systems supplied by the French firm Thales. Even so, we need to be aware of the speed at which things are escalating. To go in hours from a dispute about shellfish involving a few dozen boats to the threat of a blockade is extraordinary – and, in terms of what it means for the future, sobering.
Mature democracies do not cut off their neighbours’ energy supplies. That is the kind of thing Vladimir Putin does when he wishes to browbeat Ukraine or other former Russian possessions.
Is that how the EU – which has backed France in this dispute, as it had backed Macron’s previous threat to cut off Britain’s electricity if he did not get his way during the Brexit talks – sees Britain? As a renegade province whose economic success, rather than being good news for its own exporters, is an unconscionable affront?
If it were only a scrap about shellfish, we could laugh it off as an opéra bouffe quarrel. But this is just the latest in a series of hostile gestures from the EU: the vaccine blockade, from which every neighbouring country was exempted apart from Britain; the vindictive decision to blackball Britain from the Lugano Convention, an intergovernmental agreement on cross-border legal enforcement that includes EU and non-EU states; the refusal to reciprocate Britain’s recognition of equivalence in financial services – normally an automatic courtesy among developed nations.
Most serious is the EU’s readiness to stir up political tensions in Northern Ireland in an attempt to force the UK to accept, in perpetuity, its regulations on animal and food standards. You will remember that, during the Brexit talks, the EU liked to present itself as a defender of peace on the island of Ireland. That claim has been exposed as utter piffle. Not only was the EU prepared to impose a border, it is interpreting the Northern Ireland Protocol in a way that is directly destabilising the Province – witness the toppling of its First Minister, Arlene Foster. Brussels has plainly identified Ulster as a pressure point, a place where the UK can be squeezed whenever it looks likely to diverge economically.
This belligerence goes well beyond Macron, whose theatrical identification with the man who inflicted military dictatorship on France and war on every neighbouring country tells its own story. It goes beyond even the lingering resentment of the 2016 referendum which still conditions the attitude of many Eurocrats. What I suspect we are seeing is the rise in illiberal populism that I always feared would be the consequence of the lockdowns.
Voters around the world are in an authoritarian mood, and their politicians know it. In France, 56 per cent of the electorate backed a recent letter by retired generals hinting that a military intervention might be needed to halt the nation’s slide into chaos. Reading such polls, is it surprising that Macron decides to lash out at the ancient foe, however petty the notional dispute, and ignoring the fact Jersey was never in the EU in the first place?
The question for Britain is how to respond – not just to the intimidation of its Crown Dependency, but to a generally unfriendly Eurocracy. The EU’s threatened electricity embargo is, in itself, nothing to worry about. Britain is close to being self-sufficient in energy and, if ever there were a real emergency, it is sitting on around 300 years’ supply of coal. But the fact that such a threat could be issued at all calls into question whether we can still think of the EU as a friend.
Britain currently acts as though the alliance were beyond question. Our soldiers patrol Estonia’s Russian marches. The RAF functions, in effect, as Romania’s airforce. Is it really credible to carry on in this manner when the EU takes an increasingly Putinite attitude towards us?
The question is complicated by the fact that, individually, most of the 27 states are unambiguous friends. The trouble is that, with every day that passes, the EU expands its foreign policy remit, shifting powers from well-disposed national capitals to malevolent Brussels institutions.
We have been here before. After his defeat at Trafalgar, Napoleon imposed what he called “le blocus continental”, an embargo designed to make European states to trade with each other rather than with Britain. It failed miserably, making no dent in Britain’s prosperity but seriously impoverishing Europe – not least France. Boney, like Macron, had failed to understand that protectionism does the most damage to the country that imposes it. In the end, Europe’s nations tired of being ruled from abroad and took back their independence.
Mature democracies do not cut off their neighbours’ energy supplies. That is the kind of thing Putin does