Migration, Brexit, fishing, Aukus alliance… Nothing is going well between London and Paris: the British conservative media do not miss an opportunity to ridicule Emmanuel Macron as a jealous and hesitant Napoleon, and the French media to portray Boris Johnson as an inveterate liar. The quarrel goes far beyond the classic rivalry between two neighbors, so similar in their past to former colonial empires and their claim to international influence. Brexit seems to be slowly poisoning the two countries.
The Johnson government holds the Macron government partly responsible for the divorce treaty, which the British deem inadequate, and the post-Brexit trade deal, which they find frustrating. It is true that France has been the toughest in the interminable negotiations leading to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union (EU), during which the Twenty-Seven remained united. “She mistakenly thought that the UK was going to become a sort of deregulated Singapore-on-Thames. It also wanted to capture market share in the City or in the automotive sector ”, Judge Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform. “Paris also took this very hard line to deprive the extreme parties of arguments in favor of Brexit”, adds the expert.
Eighteen months after the divorce, Paris does not support London’s instrumentalization of the particular situation of Northern Ireland to demand a renegotiation of the Northern Irish protocol. A strategy that Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to former prime minister Tony Blair, called ” vandalism ” in the columns of Financial Times. “The Prime Minister wants to continue the battle for Brexit, because it serves his political interests”, says Labor MP Hilary Benn, who was at the forefront of the fight against Brexit. The French are also convinced: Mr Johnson keeps the flame of dissension with the EU alive to strengthen his popularity within the Tory party.
“No more wrongs on the British side”
In Paris and Brussels, diplomats are also struggling to keep their cool when Downing Street multiplies the untruths about the alleged “gains” of Brexit. Boris Johnson and David Frost, Minister for Relations with the EU, have thus attributed to Brexit the success of the anti-Covid vaccine campaign of spring 2021, while nothing would have prevented a United Kingdom member of the EU from leading its own vaccination campaign without going through collective purchases in Brussels.
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