French Letter: it’s time to re-write the Entente Cordiale

I keep reading that France is now the sworn enemy of the UK and that Emmanuel Macron, in particular, is hell-bent on making les anglais pay for all the blows he has had to suffer in his four-and-a-half years as President. 

Now I don’t doubt that Macron would like to see Britain taken down a peg or two. L’affaire des sous-marins, combined with the emergence of the AUKUS defence pact in the South Pacific, had him spitting teeth, and he is far from best-pleased by the Brits’ go-slow on giving French trawlermen access to the UK’s fishing grounds. It must be hard for a man so imbued with a sense of his own destiny to see a country striking out on its own.

But if the Brits have been hard on him – and they have – he hasn’t exactly helped the situation. Let us not forget the AstraZeneca put-down, in which a frustrated Macon let it be known that the Oxford vaccine, rolled out in record time, was, let us say, less than optimal. He shouldn’t have mouthed off as he did. That was beneath him. 

Similarly, his recent call for the UK to be punished by the EU for its stand on the Northern Ireland Protocol was rightly perceived in Europe as ill-advised and premature. Busily engaged in the pursuit of a solution to the crisis, Brussels prefered politely to look the other way. 

All in all, then, not an annus mirabilis for France’s haughty and prickly head of state. With the presidential election only six months away, he could do with a victory and should probably turn his gaze inward rather than casting Boris Johnson and the Tories as the authors of his misfortune. 

And yet and yet. Britain – led by a man at least as narcissistic and markedly less rational than Macron – is equally responsible for the breakdown. Every day, the pro-Brexit media thunders against the Old Enemy, delighting in every “defeat” handed out to the Frogs by good old John Bull. At the same time, behind their hands, ministers add fuel to the flames.   

It must have been like this in the years following Trafalgar and Waterloo. We never cease reminding the French of how we won the war (which would come as something of a surprise to the US and Russia) and how they capitulated to the Germans. We continue to demonise De Gaulle as an ingrate who refused to let us join the Common Market even though the French leader was one-hundred per cent right about how our membership would turn out and was, in effect, the inspiration for Brexit. 

Today, while ourselves lurching from crisis to crisis, we think we have France on the run as if Boris was Johnny English and Macron was the hapless Inspector Clouseau. All a bit sad, if you ask me, and, like Brexit itself (if you take the Remoan position), a cause that exists in defiance of the facts.

Those who inveigh against France in these troubled times should be aware that its economy has not collapsed. It has proved surprisingly resilient and is on course to recover at least as quickly as that of the UK. Moreover, while Macron was, like Johnson, slow on the uptake as far as the pandemic is concerned, he has since overseen a Covid response more effective in the long run than Britain’s. 

The plain facts of the matter are that France, with a slightly larger population, has recorded a total of 118,000 deaths from Covid against 138,000 in the UK. And France is continuing to improve. This week, up to Thursday night, 38 people died from Covid in France, while in the UK, the equivalent number was 157. It is the same with ongoing cases. 

In the UK, close to 45,000 new cases were reported between Monday and Thursday of this week. In France, the figure was 5,187. On the vaccines front, it is currently a tie, with 45 per cent of the adult population in both countries recorded as fully vaccinated and 67 per cent listed as having received a single dose. The difference is that France (and Macron has to take the blame for this) started months later and has since caught up with remarkable speed. 

Moving away from boring old statistics, what truly matters is that France and the UK should not, and need not, be at loggerheads. Together, the two countries, with their thousand years of interwoven history, represent Europe’s best hope of resisting global tyranny. Between us, we have the continent’s largest and most effective armed forces and the most influential representation on the diplomatic stage. Knocking lumps out of each other does nobody any good. Nor does the blame game end in victory for one side or the other. Both of us are losers. 

Brexit has happened, and France needs to recognise this and move on. If Macron hopes to win a second term, Brit-bashing is not the way. For its part, the UK has to acknowledge that Paris remains a vibrant and important world capital that, together with Germany, will almost certainly remain a key driving force of the European project. 

Those in Britain who see the nation that starts in Calais as a nation in decline, destined only to be a holiday destination or a place in which to buy a second home (without ever learning to speak the language), are wrong. The French are full of invention and will be punching their weight and beyond for centuries to come. Equally, the French view of the UK (okay, England and its bits) as an offshore island that got too big for its boots has to be revisited. 

Ten years from now, a hundred years from now, the UK (or what remains of it), will still be in business, and the City of London will still be one of the world’s largest financial centres. And British prime ministers will be making their own sovereign decisions without reference to either Paris or Brussels, perhaps – who knows? – even independently of America.

We are two great countries, le Royaume Uni and the French Republic. We know each other up and down. Can we not agree to go forward separately but together? If we do, the world will be a better place.