Johnson, Macron and their entente discordiale
Barbs and accusations have replaced common understanding between Britain and France
When Emmanuel Macron made his first presidential visit to the UK in January 2018, he did so bearing a gift – an offer to lend Britain the Bayeux Tapestry in what was seen as the new spirit of cooperation both sides were seeking after the Brexit vote.
Since then, however, Theresa May has gone and Boris Johnson is in power. Brexit may have been delivered but tensions remain: a new Entente Discordiale has descended.
Almost four years on, the tapestry is yet to reach the UK. Instead, it emerged earlier this year that it is in need of urgent repair: there are an estimated 10,000 holes in it.
The image of the tapestry, faded and tattered, has come to mind in recent days as London and Paris have launched into a new round of insults, swipes and finger-pointing.
The trigger could not have been more serious: the discovery of 27 bodies – three of them children – in the English Channel after a fatal attempt to reach Britain in an inflatable boat. But the speed with which the urge for action has descended into a slanging match is all too familiar. Barbs have become the hallmark of the Johnsonmacron relationship.
To plot how the situation has reached rock bottom, one obvious place to start is the G7 summit in Cornwall last June.
That event marked something of a resumption of normal geopolitics after 18 months of fighting Covid. Yet it was tensions over the UK’S threat to unilaterally suspend parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol unless Brussels agreed to changes that made headlines beforehand.
Mr Macron, present for Mr Johnson’s big moment on the world stage, was ready to apply a little pressure – sometimes tongue in cheek.
A photograph posted on the French president’s Twitter feed showing him with fellow EU leaders – the UK, of course, now absent – included the words “as always, the same union, the same determination to act, the same enthusiasm”.
The British and French leaders had their own private discussion later at the summit, not least about easing customs checks on goods travelling from Britain into Northern Ireland.
What followed infuriated the Élysée Palace. A British figure familiar with the exchange briefed reporters that Mr Macron had misunderstood that Northern Ireland was a full part of the UK. “The Prime Minister said to Mr Macron: ‘How would you like it if the French courts stopped you moving Toulouse sausages to Paris?’” the source said. “He replied that it was not a good comparison because Paris and Toulouse are both part of the same country.”
The briefing brought a rebuttal from Mr Macron’s team, who argued that he had been noting the differences in the examples – not least the sea separating the mainland UK from Northern Ireland. “Let’s not lose time in disagreements created in corridors or antechambers,” Mr Macron said when asked about the claim. Translation: it was cooked up by the British.
That sense of ill feeling – that Mr Johnson and his team do not play it straight – permeates Mr Macron’s team, according to French reports, and helps explain recent ructions.
Little did the president know that a second source of fierce disagreement was developing in a room away from the spotlight at the G7 summit.
Joe Biden, the US President, and Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, met Mr Johnson for threeway talks about which the press were given little information at the time.
We now know that one of the items on the agenda was the Aukus defence pact that would see the US and UK help Canberra acquire nuclearpowered submarines.
When the agreement became public in September, Mr Macron was indignant because it replaced the €56 billion (£48 billion) “contract of the century” submarine deal France had signed with Australia in 2016.
The diplomatic reaction was swift and heated. Jean-yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, called the pact a “stab in the back”. Paris recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra – though, tellingly, not from London.
“With Britain, there is no need,” Mr Le Drian said by way of explanation.
“We know their constant opportunism, so there is no need to bring our ambassador back to explain.”
Mr Johnson could barely conceal his glee during a trip to Washington soon afterwards. He had a 90-minute conversation with Mr Biden in the Oval Office in which – again, according to a leak from the British end – the President agreed that the French had overreacted.
With Mr Morrison, there was a boozy celebration over 20-year-old tawny port at the Australian residence in Washington that was soon being referred to as the “raucus Aukus” dinner by Downing Street.
Later, feeling buoyant, Mr Johnson deployed Franglais to send a message to his French counterparts during an interview: “Prenez un grip and donnez-moi un break.” In other words: Mr Macron, get a grip.
Later that day, huddling with journalists on a train to New York, Mr Johnson suggested Paris was reacting like someone who had just been told of the end of a relationship. “Boris likens Macron to a jilted lover”, declared the next day’s Daily Mail. Figures inside Mr Johnson’s inner circle – including those round the Cabinet table – do not hide the fact that relations between the two leaders have deteriorated in recent months, nor do they hide their frustration with Mr Macron.
One Cabinet minister described the French president as “very spiteful and very vain” back in September. Another said this week: “It’s like Macron’s having a nervous breakdown.”
Some on the British end who have listened in on calls between the two men in recent months have been taken aback at Mr Macron’s hard tone – despite both leaders repeatedly calling the other “friend” in public.
The Prime Minister sees Mr Macron as being behind the EU’S recalcitrance in the face of British pleas to change customs arrangements in Northern Ireland.
There is also a widespread feeling – from Downing Street to the
Tory back benches – that Mr Macron and his ministers are unlikely to tone down their rhetoric this side of his re-election attempt next April.
But the mistrust cuts both ways. The Élysée’s antipathy towards the man who led the Brexit campaign now demanding France’s help on border controls was evident yesterday in the furious response to the Prime Minister’s letter proposing a “returns agreement” on migrants reaching the UK by boat.
Mr Macron’s dismissal of the proposals as “not serious” was
noteworthy, but more telling was the language deployed by Gabriel Attal, a spokesman who is often the public face of Mr Macron’s government on French television.
“We are fed up with double-talk,” Mr Attal said. “You wonder whether Boris Johnson doesn’t regret leaving Europe because whenever there is a problem, he considers that Europe must handle it. But that is not the way it works. The way it works is through co-operation.”
Similarly cutting comments came last week from Stéphane Séjourné, the MEP and head of the Macronsupporting Renew group in the European Parliament, who declared: “Boris Johnson can never be trusted.”
Mr Le Drian, too, had another swipe last week, calling the Prime Minister a “populist who uses all elements at his disposal to blame others for problems he faces internally”. It is the personal nature of these jibes that jumps out.
A third dispute is over fishing licences. The UK insists it has granted licences to fish in British waters to all French boats that can prove they did so before Brexit, while Paris complains not nearly enough have been approved.
At numerous points in the past six months those tensions have risen.
In June, two Royal Navy vessels were sent to patrol Jersey waters after French fishermen, angered by the lack of licences, threatened a blockade. A new flare-up came yesterday, when French trawlermen temporarily blocked the entrances to the port of
‘It’s like Macron’s having a nervous breakdown,’ an unnamed Cabinet minister said this week
Calais and the Channel Tunnel rail link in an effort to disrupt trade.
Last month, Mr Macron appeared to use the Cop26 UN climate summit to seek change from London, repeating the approach adopted during G7.
French ministers threatened retaliatory measures ranging from cutting off energy to Jersey to slowing checks at the Channel Tunnel unless more fish licences were granted, only to back away from their self-imposed deadline when no change was forthcoming.
Then there is the clash over how to bring down the number of boats carrying migrants seeking a better life in the UK, which have hit record highs this year and, this week, ended with the tragedy most feared.
To London, the disaster underscores why French authorities should do more to stop the boats departing. To Paris, it calls into question why Britain opted out of EU measures that return migrants to the member state they first reached.
Agreement on a way forward has never seemed further away, despite communal horror and calls for co-operation after what is believed to be the greatest single loss of life in the English Channel since the Second World War.
The Sunday Times recently reported there are hopes in Downing Street that after the French presidential election next spring a new pact with Paris can be signed. But in Normandy, the stained and ragged Bayeux Tapestry is a reminder of the scale of that challenge. The fabric is said to be so fragile that experts fear it could rip apart if transported to Britain.
Restoration is not set to begin until 2024, with the window for a UK visit slamming shut when it goes back on display in France in 2026. By then, both Mr Macron and Mr Johnson could be long gone from office.