From the archives: Why England and France will never be best friends

To mark David Cameron’s get-together with Nicolas Sarkozy today, we’ve
dug up this essay from the Spectator archives by Lord Powell. As foreign policy advisor to Lady Thatcher and Sir John Major, Powell provides a first-hand insight into the incompatibilities that
separate our two nations.




A fundamental incompatibility?, Charles Powell, The Spectator, 3 September 1994


A few summers ago, I accompanied Margaret Thatcher to a meeting with President Mitterrand in Paris. The weather was sunny and the mood equally so. The agenda was rapidly disposed of and the
President proposed that we adjourn to the Elysée garden. Once there, he took Mrs Thatcher — as she then was — off for a stroll while Jacques Attali and I subsided on a bench in
the sun. For a rare and blissful moment all seemed well with the world. But within moments, the President and Prime Minister came speeding back, the President clutching a bloodstained handkerchief
to himself. ‘My God’, I thought ‘this time she’s really gone too far.