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PETER CONRADI

Between Patel’s gunboat diplomacy and Paris’s tough talk, the entente cordiale is all at sea

The Sunday Times

It was not just British visitors to France facing a sudden end to their holidays who were unhappy with the UK’s imposition of quarantine yesterday. Boris Johnson’s move was also a blow to the prestige of Emmanuel Macron’s government, which is already under fire at home for its handling of Covid-19. “If a symbol of the worsening epidemic in France was needed, Britain provided it,” observed Le Monde.

The decision came at the end of a week in which relations between Paris and London sank to a new low — fuelled by a war of words over a different sort of cross-Channel traveller: migrants trying to reach Britain in small boats.

The call by Priti Patel, the home secretary, to deploy warships to stem the