France’s Brexit Strategy <br>Could Yet Be Called <br>War By Other Means

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The New York Sun

No wonder President Macron rushed to get President Trump over to Paris. He’s maneuvering madly against Britain in the face of Brexit — a strategy that is finally out in the open with the publication in London of a leaked City of London memo shared with Brexit ministers early this month.

“France,” it warns, “sees Britain and the City of London as adversaries, not partners.” The Corporation’s special representative to the European Union, Jeremy Browne, writes of the intentions of both Paris government and banking officials.

“They are crystal clear about their underlying objective,” Mr. Browne writes; “the weakening of Britain, the on-going degradation of the City of London.”

Not that Mr. Browne is sanguine about the post-Brexit attitude in Europe toward Britain. “Every country, not unreasonably, is alive to the opportunities that Brexit provides,” he forecasts. He adds, though, that the French “go further, making a virtue of rejecting a partnership model with Britain and seemingly happy to see outcomes detrimental to the City of London even if Paris is not the beneficiary.”

Remaining members of the EU should think twice about reveling in Britain’s dilemma. Mr. Browne observes “the tone set by French representatives currently crashing conspicuously around London, making heroic relocation promises and pouring cold water on the propositions of alternative EU financial centres.”

France’s political élite is set on punishing Britain and as “their destructive impulses are not being confined,” care for naught who gets caught in the crossfire. Other countries lacking France’s hostile intent “are being marginalised,” Mr. Browne notes, as “there is plenty of anxiety elsewhere … about the French throwing their weight around so aggressively.”

Mr. Browne’s memo is also a warning for the Trump administration. In a pre-Bastille Day joint press conference, President Macron told the assembled reporters of EU consensus “to implement free and fair trade” with America. Although the topic was terrorism — “our enemies are trying to destabilize us by any way” — his assertion that co-operation “is very much at the heart of the historic alliance between our two countries” rings hollow in the context of France’s attitude to Brexit.

Mr. Trump would be wise not to put too much store in French expressions of goodwill and remember the fate of Britain’s “Entente Cordiale,” reached in the time of Edward VII and praised by Queen Elizabeth as recently as 2004 in her state visit to Paris; where does that “cordial understanding” get the British now?

Far better for Mr. Trump to remember that, as he remarked at the Élysée Palace, “Both President Macron and I understand our responsibility to prioritize the interests of our countries and, at the same time, to be respectful of the world in which we live.” It calls to mind De Gaulle’s axiom that “France has no friends, only interests.”

But America and Britain have friends in each other, in the Commonwealth of Nations, and, most relevantly, in ideas of freedom and property that animate the “liberty bloc.” These historic partners of a “special relationship” would be wise to keep in mind the signal France is now sending. With apologies to Clausewitz, these Brexit negotiations are war by other means.


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