The British-French Border Con
1st December 2020
Over the weekend, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced a new border agreement with France – “a significant moment for our two countries.” In reality, once again Britain bribed France to promise the help it had promised before. Why does the British government keep handing over resources to a con artist? Because the British government gets to say, “We have a new agreement! Problem solved!” It relies on the public forgetting the previous agreements. Yes, the British government too is a con artist, and the British public is the patsy.
In January 2018, Theresa May agreed to accept more migrants from France and to pay France to improve its border at Calais. In other words, she paid France to do what it should have been doing all along. The new agreement was an unnecessary repeat of an almost identical arrangement from 2003, which was renegotiated repeatedly, as the French turned a blind eye to illegal migrants, as long as they were emigrating to Britain. May should have repudiated it, but she repeated it. Her unadmitted hope was French help in reconciling Brexit.