Both Johnson and Macron need to get a grip

Anglo-French relations continue to deteriorate. Not even this week’s tragedy in the Channel can stop the point scoring between the two governments.

Last night, Boris Johnson issued a letter to Emmanuel Macron which proposed, among other things, a bilateral readmissions agreement between the UK and France which would see those crossing the Channel returned to France straight away. The French were not impressed either by this proposal or it being made public. 

This morning, Priti Patel was uninvited from a meeting of northern European interior ministers. Macron then went on TV to accuse the British of not being ‘serious’ and to say that leaders shouldn’t communicate by tweets. (He is right about that, but his comments do make me wonder if he has ever seen the Twitter account of his Europe Minister Clement Beaune and there’s a certain irony about saying all this to camera.)

At some point, Paris and London need to get a grip and realise that two neighbours need to have a better relationship than this.