Why France and Britain must join forces

Quote: Summits, like familiarity, can easily breed contempt. Promises readily made are quickly forgotten. Projects announced with a flourish prove rhetorical not real. We hope this week’s Franco-British summit will be different, putting work in hand that will be good for Britain and France; and good, too, for Europe and the transatlantic relationship.
Franco-British relations often fall victim to tabloid treatment. Watch out for the focus on the French president’s glamorous new wife. Spats are usually played up, differences exaggerated and emotions aroused. Long memories on both sides – and a French perception that Britain has something of a complex about France – ensure that the past frequently casts a cold shadow over the future. Occasionally the lows give way to entente cordiale and there is a burst of enthusiasm for working together. Usually, quite quickly, the optimism fades and old reflexes and stereotypes reassert themselves.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, can hardly be expected to cure the manic-depressive nature of Franco-British relations at their first summit. But they can make another attempt at reducing the debilitating mood swings. Both have come relatively recently to their jobs and have the chance to forge a new relationship at the top of government. Both are unencumbered by past Franco-British differences over Iraq. Both, in their respective ways, appear fundamentally agnostic as far as Europe is concerned. Finally, both lead countries that are joined at the hip in dealing with foreign policy challenges, from Afghanistan to the Balkans and the need to define a common approach to China and to the Russia of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
The day-to-day relationship is much better than headlines pretend. Our militaries usually work easily together. So do our intelligence services on critical issues such as counter-terrorism, illegal immigration and people trafficking. Successive French governments have worked hard to stem the flow of illegal immigrants across the Channel, an issue that was on the front pages a few years ago but has largely disappeared thanks to the co-operation between UK and French enforcement agencies. On wider international issues there is often close co-operation: at the United Nations, Britain and France have been at the heart of efforts to find a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. But, for many years, bilateral co-operation has .been much less good in another international forum – Nato.

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