Nigel Farage is wrong: the French are doing us a big favour in Calais

Last week Nigel Farage described the deal we’ve done with France over the refugee camp near Calais as a ‘humiliating capitulation’. His was the most disgruntled voice among a number of others. The disgruntlement arose from the ‘Sandhurst’ deal struck with France during President Macron’s visit to Britain. The Prime Minister had agreed (at Sandhurst) to pay some £44.5 million more for the maintenance of security on French soil, mostly around Calais, and undertaken to speed up the snail’s-pace processing of applications from refugees with family connections in Britain.

This is the price we paid for France continuing with the ‘juxtaposed’ joint border controls our two countries maintain on each other’s soil: an idea established by the Sangatte agreement between John Major’s government and its French counterpart in 1991 and the Le Touquet accord which Tony Blair struck in 2003, extending cooperation on Eurostar rail services to ferry-port services too. It was a very fair price indeed.