One of the less-inspiring moments of Liz Truss’s leadership campaign over the summer was when she refused to say whether or not Emmanuel Macron was a friend of the UK, as opposed to a foe.
Whilst nobody can deny that there are areas where British and French policy are at odds (such as Northern Ireland) it was an absurd and counter-productive bit of pandering that undermined an important working relationship for no good reason.
One upside of Rishi Sunak taking over is the opportunity to give that relationship a bit of a reset, and a dividend of that is that it looks like the Government has managed to strike a new deal with Paris about policing the English Channel.
Whilst we won’t have the details until Monday, reports suggest that the UK is going to stump up more money in exchange for enhanced patrols on the French coast. From the FT:
“Under the revamped agreement, French officials said the number of officers patrolling to stop small boat crossings will increase from 200 up to 300 by the middle of next year, with the cost of the additional monitoring covered by UK funds. In 2018, there were just 90 officers patrolling.”
In terms of treating the symptom, this will probably have some ameliorative effect; French officials claim they have already prevented more than half of attempted crossings this year, and more patrols means more interceptions.
Less obvious is what such a deal will do about the broader problem. Preventing attempted crossings is good, but presumably what happens then is the young men trying to get here throw their stones at the French police, locate another dinghy, and try again.
Ultimately, a long-term solution means finding ways to make the UK’s processing and deportation system effective, a problem it is not within the power of the French to solve. But in the medium term, the networks bringing these people to the shores of France, and profiteering off their desperation, need to be broken, with punitive sentences handed down to the ringleaders.
This should surely be something on which London and Paris could usefully collaborate. Yet the stories seem always to be about the boats.
Still, the Government would be foolish to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Treating the symptom is better than nothing, especially if the highly-visible loss of control at Dover is contributing towards the recent rumblings of a Faragist resurgence.