What Alsace-Lorraine could teach the French about the backstop

When Boris meets Macron at the G7 meeting on 24 August in Biarritz, it will be one of the first international meetings of his premiership. What will be the dynamics of that tête-à-tête? Will Macron resort to the bonhomie he used – unsuccessfully as it turned out – in his first major encounter with Donald Trump when the French President matched his American counterpart’s power handshake? Will they open with references to their respective grandparents, Macron’s British great grandfather and Boris’s half-French grandmother? Or will Macron turn down Britain’s demands with a Gaullian ‘non’? And what will Boris’s stance be? Perhaps jovial and self-mocking (something the French find difficult to deal with), but insistent that the UK will leave without a deal if France doesn’t renegotiate.

More importantly, what will be the crux of their conversation? We have an inkling as of last Friday via France’s European affairs junior minister, who on a visit to the Northern Ireland border underlined French solidarity with the Irish Republic.