RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Travel chaos? Don't blame Brexit, blame France

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Travel chaos? Don’t blame Brexit, blame France

The chaos at the Channel ports has nothing to do with Brexit. Except it has. But that’s down to France. Don’t take my word for it, just listen to arch-Remainer Jeremy Hunt.

According to the former Foreign Secretary, the French are determined to punish us for leaving the EU.

Hunt told Nick Ferrari on LBC radio: ‘They are furious about Brexit and furious with Boris.

‘There’s a lack of willingness in the French government to be co-operative with Britain in any way at all.’

So Brexit is to blame, but only because France has chosen to play silly beggars. The intolerable queues are the result of deliberate policy decisions taken in Paris. Yesterday, France was saying that all this disruption could be avoided if we ‘rejoined’ the EU’s Schengen free movement zone.

There’s only one problem with that argument: Britain has never been part of Schengen. Not that it’s done us much good. Illegal immigration is worse than ever. The French effectively turn a blind eye to cross-Channel trafficking.

Yet when British holidaymakers are headed in the other direction, it’s a different story.

The chaos at the Channel ports has nothing to do with Brexit. Except it has. But that’s down to France. Don’t take my word for it, just listen to arch-Remainer Jeremy Hunt

Even though we have always had passport checks when travelling into Europe, the French have chosen the peak summer holiday season to manufacture a monumental go-slow.

Ignore the blatant lies about sudden staff shortages. This is guerrilla warfare, sanctioned by the French government and cheered on by a pro-EU fifth column here at home.

They hope that by inflicting the maximum possible inconvenience on the British public, we will eventually see the error of our ways and crawl back to Brussels with our tails between our legs, begging to be readmitted to the protectionist club.

Despite his being on the losing side in the referendum and twice rejected in his attempts to become Prime Minister, Hunt obviously still entertains the fantasy that our future lies within Europe’s sclerotic superstate.

Why else would he make excuses for France’s disgraceful behaviour? ‘They think we’ve mucked up their long-term plan for a united Europe and I hope that when we have a new Prime Minister we can have a reset in relations with France and indeed the EU more broadly, so that we can co-operate as good neighbours should,’ Hunt said.

So it’s all our fault, is it, Jezza?

Since we officially left the EU, we’ve gone out of our way to be good neighbours.

According to the former Foreign Secretary, the French are determined to punish us for leaving the EU

If only the same could be said of our ‘friends’ in Europe.

Who was it sent gunboats to the Channel Islands and threatened to cut off electricity supplies?

Who rubbished Britain’s world-beating Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and tried to rip up the post-Brexit trade deal to stop supplies reaching Britain? Who is threatening a trade war, rather than negotiate a sensible solution to the impasse in Northern Ireland?

It can’t be a coincidence that at the same time France constructs artificial and unnecessary barriers to British holidaymakers crossing the Channel, the EU has launched not one, but four legal actions against us over the N.I. Protocol.

They can smell weakness in Westminster, as Boris exits stage left — pursued by a bear in the shape of the Commons privileges committee — and Britain is left rudderless while the Tory party indulges in six weeks of infighting and navel-gazing before choosing a new leader.

And they know they can rely on useful idiots such as Hunt, the BBC and the rest of the recalcitrant Remainiacs to crank up the hysteria and blame it all on our decision to quit the EU.

Up until now, we have been far too docile when it comes to confronting the post-Brexit hostility towards Britain — most of which is generated by the unelected standing bureaucracy in Brussels and that pipsqueak Napoleon wannabe Macron, who fancies himself as Emperor of Greater Europe.

Up until now, we have been far too docile when it comes to confronting the post-Brexit hostility towards Britain — most of which is generated by the unelected standing bureaucracy in Brussels and that pipsqueak Napoleon wannabe Macron, who fancies himself as Emperor of Greater Europe

The truth is that continental Europe is a basket case right now, engulfed in an economic and energy crisis, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. A trade war is in nobody’s interest.

But while French intransigence at the border persists, we have a few cards of our own to play.

For instance, why are we still allowing EU citizens to use fast-track e-gates at airports, when British passport holders are forced to queue for hours to enter the EU via France? That should cease immediately.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves the French are our friends and must be appeased. They have only ever acted in their own self-interest, from that ingrate de Gaulle’s ‘Non’ to our joining the Common Market to French farmers burning lorries carrying British lamb exports and French fishermen sabotaging British boats.

Yet still millions of us flock to France every year, beguiled by Mediterranean beaches and idyllic rural villages. Maybe it’s time we started looking farther afield until their government stops treating us with contempt.

One of my favourite quotes comes from the late Arthur Lowe’s second-greatest comic creation after Captain Mainwaring — the grumpy, xenophobic retired businessman Redvers Potter, from the early 1980s TV series written by Roy Clarke, of Last Of The Summer Wine fame.

‘I love everything French… except the French.’

Liz Truss reveals she likes to throw some shapes to Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark.

Why doesn’t that surprise me?

Dancing In The Dark is the favourite Springsteen song of people who don’t really like Bruce Springsteen. He only wrote it after his manager told him he needed a hit single for the Born In The USA album.

Fizzy Lizzie should have chosen No Surrender instead, claiming it reminded her of the bog standard comprehensive she attended.

Liz Truss reveals she likes to throw some shapes to Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark

‘We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school . . .’

Or even, Rosalita. ‘Some day we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny.’

If Lizzie’s lucky, her Glory Days are still ahead.

British troops have been banned from hiring prostitutes abroad but not, for some reason, at home. The policy was introduced after it was revealed that squaddies stationed in Kenya were paying for sex through a chain-link fence. Ouch!

But as Churchill said when he learned that a guardsman had been caught in flagrante with another man in St James’s Park in sub-zero temperatures: Makes you proud to be British.

This rewilding business is getting completely out of hand. Last week I brought you news of bison being reintroduced in Kent, 6,000 years after becoming extinct in Britain.

Now along comes another rare species returning to our shores, the giant sea eagle from Norway.

With a wingspan of 2.5 metres, they are Britain’s biggest bird of prey and have been compared to ‘flying barn doors’. If you thought swooping seagulls stealing your fish and chips were a problem, best think again.

On the Isle of Skye, sea eagles have been blamed for killing lambs on the croft belonging to porky pub bore Ian Blackford, leader of Wee Burney’s Toytown Tartanistas at Westminster. Admittedly, they’d have their talons full if they tried to airlift Blackford like the Trojan prince scooped up by the Greek god Zeus, disguised as an eagle.

But Blackford’s sheep are easy meat.

And according to a neighbouring crofter, the giant predators are fond of snacking on puffins ‘like Mars bars’.

No wonder farmers are resisting plans to relocate sea eagles to other areas. Landowners in Norfolk have been battling conservationists who want to settle 60 breeding pairs in East Anglia.

In Scotland, the fanatics behind the reintroduction of sea eagles also want to bring back lynxes and wild boar. Why stop there?

Some people won’t be happy until Britain starts to look like Jurassic Park.

Harriet Harman, who is leading the tedious anti-Boris witch-hunt, even though he’s resigned as PM, glories in the title of Mother Of The House, befitting her status as Westminster’s longest-serving female MP.

Surely given Hattie’s equalities obsession, that should be ‘Birthing Person Of The House’. . .

Harriet Harman, who is leading the tedious anti-Boris witch-hunt, even though he’s resigned as PM, glories in the title of Mother Of The House, befitting her status as Westminster’s longest-serving female MP

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