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

Yet, according to Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, Macron seems convinced he can still take a tough line at the post-Brexit trade talks. “The French want to have their cake and eat it,” said Grant. “When I say to the French, ‘Look, if you give the British a bum deal on trade, don’t expect them to be so keen to co-operate on security’, they say: ‘Of course, they’ll co-operate. Absolutely. They’ve got nowhere else to go.’ But the politics may not work that way.”