Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Daffodils

The French President came to the UK this week for a State visit. He impressed us with his Anglophile speeches and effusive praise, and his wife wowed us with her glamour and French chic. They stayed at Windsor Castle where they had lunch with the Queen and attended a State Banquet in their honour in the evening. The following day they mixed politics with pleasure and then left for home, leaving behind feelings of admiration and thoughtfulness. It seems apparent that when you’re being criticised at home, arrange a visit abroad and you can usually receive genuine appreciation from your host which builds your international stature.
 
Of course this doesn’t always work when what you do at home is already incensing international relations; but the French have always been linked to the British and certainly for the past one thousand years. Maybe it is this familiarity that sometimes causes contempt and the occasional friction. From the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, the two nations have been in conflict right up to the mid-nineteenth century. But in the twentieth century we began to understand the importance of France to Britain and standing together, the importance of both countries to Europe as a whole.

Mind you over the past few decades, there has been some suspicion in both camps as to the importance of each to each other. As the largest island in Europe, we have often ourselves as more an outpost of Europe rather than an integrated part, and France has often said ‘well suit yourselves!’. So to be addressed in such a warm manner as the French President did last week, was a surprise. Maybe we do have more in common than we have always thought and maybe continental Europe is important to us. Hopefully the gentle but straightforward encouragement that the French President offered our politicians, will bring home the reality that we can no longer sit in splendid isolation as when the British Empire covered large parts of the globe. That globalisation is no longer so specific and we have to accept our natural differences, but understand that we actually live in the same camp.