Queues of up to ten hours to cross the canal opens another Anglo-French crisis

It seemed that even before Johnson’s fall, relations between London and Paris were not so strained. But it was a mirage. The diplomatic ground was so dry that a spark was enough to burn the forest again, and with more anger. Behind were queues of up to ten hours in Dover to cross the English Channel by ferry or the Eurotunnel, coinciding with the mass exodus of the British to the continent with the beginning of the long-awaited school holidays.

Both Downing Street and the Foreign Office (the fiefdom of Liz Truss, the likely new prime minister in September) are suspicious of French President Emmanuel Macron, who blames him for the border collapse. “He is determined to get us to pay for Brexit, and he’s not missing an opportunity,” official sources from the Johnson administration say. To which the French respond that the English were brought upon themselves by their decision to leave the European Union and turn the United Kingdom into a “third country” of the societal bureaucracy.

In an atmosphere of massive diplomatic skepticism, the British regret that Macron does not support Ukraine much more

Despite the fact that Brexit is the inevitable background to the matter, several specific factors have determined Dover’s huge three-day queues and access roads to its port, making the canal crossing very long. Queues of cars and trucks wait for their turn to present documents, looking like a border crossing between South Africa and Zimbabwe or Namibia. Thousands of families had to sleep in their car and missed a day off.

One factor, and perhaps the most important, was that due to a series of logistical problems, many French agents were unable to travel to Dover (where they implement their control by bilateral agreement, just as the British do at Calais) and thus only four of the twelve lanes were operated. Another reason was the lack of facilities in the port of Kent due to the lack of investment to expand it (its managers asked London 40 million pounds, and received only 40 thousand pounds). It also contributed to a series of accidents that caused traffic jams. And finally, the wave of travelers at the end of July, when schools give children holidays in Great Britain.

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But neither side missed an opportunity to politicize the issue. Paris, to say that traffic would be more fluid if the UK were an EU member, and what to do about it, given that their dealerships are already working as hard as possible (they’ve allowed an average of one car per minute). Even before Brexit, Great Britain was not part of the Schengen area and its citizens’ passports were checked at the border. The biggest difference is the truck controls, which contribute to queuing, but only slightly.

And on the London side, the two candidates to succeed Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, wasted no time in “demanding” Paris to act, sending Dover all the border police and customs needed to mitigate the collapse. At the same time, they took the opportunity to blame France for the large influx of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats taking advantage of the good weather, and endorsed the policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda (Foreign Minister, famous for her ideas of pilgrims, contemplating similar agreements with countries “like Spain and Turkey”) , According to him times vice Tori while the former finance minister is proposing to put it on ships, just as Australia did).

London accuses Macron of not supporting Ukraine strongly enough, and of trying to show that Brexit is a failure. While the Elysee and European advisers accuse British diplomacy of violating an international treaty. for all this press Tori The English require a trade-off, delaying the processing of the entry of European citizens into the UK, so that they suffer the same as Britons when it comes to access to France. The fire progresses though “hasta la vista, baby” (that’s how he literally said goodbye), and the firefighters have a mission.