Emmanuel Macron holds Britain’s Brexit fate in his hands

C.S. Forester, creator of Hornblower, a great student of Anglo-French relations, wrote a now often overlooked exhortative novel titled Death to the French. Contemporary readers might consider it triggering if not racist, yet it captures well a traditional British reaction when angry Frenchmen start throwing missiles at us. Here in the south of France we are some distance from the troubled waters of the Guerre de Coquilles Saint Jacques. On the shores of the Mediterranean, oysters are favoured and war fever muted, although nobody at Chez Trini’s café doubts that the perfidious English are up to their usual conneries. I tend to agree, but then I’m applying for an Irish passport (thanks to my Belfast-born grandmother). Hedging my bets, I am no longer 100 per cent committed to batting for Britain, especially not over a scallop. Irrespective of my own views of the rights and wrongs in the Bay of the Seine, and honestly unfamiliar with the details, I’m betting on the French to come off best in this skirmish. I’ve travelled on the Norman coast and would note that the forefathers of these guys were pirates and privateers, hard men, terrorising the western approaches and retreating under the massive fortifications of Saint-Mâlo to share out their loot. Also, as far as prospects for this war go, and regrettably for the Admiral Blimps demanding a robust riposte, the British boats will probably be prevented from returning and confronting the French, for perfectly reasonable and proportional reasons of health and safety. Finally, practically, this may not be the moment that the British government can assemble much of a fleet to defend its scallop men. I see no ships, as someone once said. Besides, there are other fish to fry. This year there is less of a rentrée politique than usual in France because nobody in the hyperactive inner circle of Emmanuel Macron has actually stopped plotting, and nobody else’s political manoeuvring really matters.