Braverman and French speaking same language on migrant crisis

Home Secretary’s fluency in foreign tongue helps to create ‘entente cordiale’ as joint patrols are debated

SUELLA BRAVERMAN has used her fluent French to develop an “entente cordiale” during opening talks on Channel migrants with France after it had blocked proposals for joint patrols on its northern beaches.

The Home Secretary had her first call with her opposite number, Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, days after she took up her post this month and told staff tackling the crisis it would be one of her “clear priorities”.

As the talks began, Ms Braverman made the initial introductions and personal exchanges in French before getting down to the business of the pair’s “shared interest” in tackling the record surge in Channel migrants.

Her mother is from Mauritius, where French and English are spoken, and Ms Braverman lived in France for two years as an Erasmus Programme student and then as an Entente Cordiale Scholar, completing a master’s degree in European and French law at Panthéon-sorbonne University in central Paris.

The talks were said to have been “positive” and “quite warm”, helped by a fluency in French that enables her to identify when official translators miss the nuance of a French word.

It talks started after it emerged that France had rejected a rquest for British immigration officers to be deployed on French soil. Britain has been pushing for years to bolster French patrols with UK officers to help prevent migrants setting off for the British coast.

However, its attempts have been stymied by sensitivities over sovereignty, despite the fact that Albanian police help tackle organised crime in France.

It is believed the potential deal faltered because although the French would accept a handful of observers the British wanted to send a bigger cohort.

Neither side confirmed reports yesterday that Liz Truss’s failure to say whether France should be considered a “friend or foe” during the Tory leadership camapaign, when she was still foreign secretary, had influenced the talks. However, sources did not deny that a deal was close enough for a draft joint press release to have been drawn up.

It is part of a wider dialogue to renew last summer’s deal in which Britain paid France £54million to fund more patrols, surveillance, border security and asylum camps away from the coast. It is thought sovereignty is a red line for France, so any deal is likely to entail surveillance drones, co-operation and financial support for French patrols.