Macron warns Boris Johnson Brexit could turn UK into vassal state of US before they meet in Paris

Boris Johnson received a more cordial welcome than
he might have expected last night when he met the German chancellor, Angela
Merkel, in Berlin on his first trip abroad as PM. But today he is in Paris for
lunch with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and their exchanges might be
considerably more prickly.
Macron has repeatedly accused the leave campaign,
that Johnson led, of lying to the British public, of all the main EU leaders he
has been least willing to make concessions to the UK over Brexit, and
yesterday, in a two-and-a-half hour briefing with journalists (not mainly about
Johnson – the UK is not that important to France – it was a marathon event
because Macron is hosting the G7 summit at the weekend) Macron delivered two
very unpalatable messages for his British counterpart.
Macron said that renegotiating the EU withdrawal
agreement was “not an option”. Johnson says, without a renegotiation, there
will be no Brexit deal.
Macron suggested that Brexit would stop the UK being
a great power. This was particularly provocative because Johnson claims that
Brexit will enhance the UK’s independence and prestige. But Macron argued that
Brexit would leave the UK dependent on the US. He said:
The British are attached to being a great power, a
member of the security council. The point can’t be to exit Europe and say
‘we’ll be stronger’, before in the end, becoming the junior partner of the
United States, which are acting more and more hegemonically.
In a particularly neat twist, using the language of
Brexiters to contest one of the main claims of the Brexit project, Macron even
suggested that outside the EU, instead of being released from European
vassalage, Britain would end up a vassal state of the US.
There are more accounts of what Macron said at his
briefing at the Guardian, at HuffPost, at Politico Europe and at Reuters.
My colleague Angelique Chrisafis has written a
preview of the Macron/Johnson meeting which has some very good background on
their relationship. Here is an extract.
Johnson began pinpointing France as a problem long
before he became PM. While being filmed for a documentary last year when he was
foreign secretary, he said of France: “Why are they trying to shaft us?” He
called France “naughty children” on the issue of Europe. He later denied he had
called the French “turds” over Brexit.
Johnson is well known in Paris for what the local
media call his “French-bashing” for a domestic audience, notably as London
mayor when he said his city’s bike scheme was a Rolls-Royce to Paris’s Citroën
2CV. He said the Socialist government at the time, with its proposed high tax
rate on the very rich, had been “captured by sans-culottes” running a “tyranny”
of the like not seen since the French Revolution.
“To be popular in the UK, do you always have to
criticise the French?” one French interviewer asked him as mayor. “No, not at
all,” he replied, saying he loved France.
Johnson is due to meet Macron at 12pm UK time. They
are not due to hold a press conference, but both leaders are expected to make
short statements to the media.
Otherwise the diary is relatively light today. At
9.30am the Office for National Statistics is publishing migration figures, and
at some point Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, is chairing the
first meeting of the Freeports advisory panel.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news
as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis
from the web. I plan to publish a summary when I wrap up.
You can read all the latest Guardian politics
articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political
news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.
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