Deal or no deal, Macron and Starmer won't stop the boats

The relationship between the UK and France was one of the most conspicuous casualties of the Brexit process. So there will have been big sighs of relief in Downing Street at the evident success of Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to the UK and the summit that followed.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

The French president took a full three days out of his schedule to spend in this country - that is a long time by today's standards. Ceremonial Britain, for its part, pulled out all the stops.

The sun shone, the flags flew - and the undoubted result is an improved diplomatic atmosphere that should help consign some of the adverse Brexit fallout to the past. To the extent that better diplomatic relations improve the prospects for solving, rather than just smoothing over, aggravations, a new chapter has opened.

And the emblem of this - signalled days in advance by the prime minister, but seemingly not tied down until now, is what has been billed the “one-in, one-out” agreement on Channel crossings.

It can be argued that there are more significant issues potentially dividing the UK and France than the “small boats”, which account for a relatively small proportion of new arrivals in the UK.

Those more significant issues would include defence, our respective Atlantic and European allegiances, and nuclear cooperation - this last, in fact, being the subject of a new agreement during Macron's visit that could prove more important in the longer term than anything else that was decided.

At the popular and domestic political level, however, it is no contest - not for the UK public and not for its government either.

Having pledged to stop the boats, smash the gangs and scale back the use of asylum hotels, this government has presided over a near-50 per cent rise in small boat arrivals. It is one of the most abject and visible failures of its first year in office.