So, we’ve finally fallen out of love with France. Can zey blame us?
Icouldn’t help but smirk into my Earl Grey when I read last week that the French are in a state of grave panic because of a sharp decline in British visitors to the country – a fall of six per cent is predicted for 2017.
Reader: I didn’t just smirk; I actually cackled. For what was zis? Could it really be that the EU’s bully-in-chief actually wants something to do with us – vulgar old Brexiteering us – after all?
Seems so. Our taste for patisserie, camping, museums and cheap and tasty plonk fuels crucial spending. Britain sends more tourists to France than any other country: of the 83million tourists who visited last year, 11.9million were from the UK.
That Brits are now heading for Greece, Spain and Portugal instead has shocked French sensibilities, which are built on the assumption that they can be as nasty as they like about lumbering old us while we’ll always idolise them.
Sorry, mes amis, but times are a-changing. The weak pound makes an expensive, unfriendly and strike-prone country less appealing.
Meanwhile, great croissants and rude waiters are no longer the draws they once were, especially when Portugal and Spain offer fascinating history, beauty, charm,
friendliness, and excellent food and wine to boot.
Paris – once the urban incarnation of romance in the British imagination – has not only been tainted by a sense of being a lawless land, but also with filth and disarray.
“France is falling to pieces in front of their very eyes. Shanty towns in Paris itself,” one former fan commented online below a report of the story. Another put it even more damningly: “Paris? Last time I went it was filthy. I don’t feel the need to go back to what used to be one of my favourite cities.” Another man, meanwhile, said he stayed away these days from “the most unfriendly people in Europe”.
The obstructive, spiteful, ungenerous and manipulative attitude of Frenchman Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has not gone unnoticed either. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if our keeping away has more to do with the obnoxious behaviour of Monsieur Barnier than the weak pound.
Barnier could do worse than listen to his tourism chiefs: British goodwill is important because our money is important. Bullying and laughing at us at the negotiating table is bound to end in tears.
Take it from the tourism industry: treating us mean is not the way to keep us keen, no matter how good your tartes aux citron are.