The state of France’s relationship with Britain

EVEN TRAGEDY, it seems, cannot bring Britain and France together. For a brief moment on November 24th, after 27 refugees died in the icy English Channel trying to cross in an inflatable boat from the northern French coast to Britain, it looked as if tensions between the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, might ease. But this was not to be. For behind the row about migrants lies a fundamental problem: the two neighbours are separated by a narrow channel of water and a gulf of mutual distrust.Neither side is blameless in this latest spat. The day after the drownings, and without warning the French, Mr Johnson tweeted a letter he had sent to Mr Macron. In it he proposed ideas about better cross-border cooperation, such as the dispatch of British soldiers and policemen to patrol French beaches, which had already been rejected by France as an infringement of sovereignty. The letter also proposed a “returns agreement” to take back migrants who arrive in Britain, which the French have repeatedly made clear is a matter for EU, not bilateral, discussion.