The bottle washer
France’s anger at the collapse of its submarine deal with Australia and the emergence of a new US/UK/Aus naval pact is understandable. America seems to have lost the knack of breaking bad news to allies, let alone keeping them on board.
The gloating in the UK that this is some kind of diplomatic triumph and it is now a power to be reckoned with in the Pacific, ignores quite a few facts. The most important is that the EU is still on its borders, the UK has cocked up the withdrawal agreement and needs a lot of goodwill to make it work better.
The amount of goodwill in Paris is best summed up by the comment on why France recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra but not London; when restaurant food is bad you sack the chef not the bottle washer.
Everything I read from within the EU tells me they have got over Brexit and see any problems as technical ones that they can leave to the European Commission. But that doesn’t mean this is a good time to annoy the French and all the other EU states who think this is crass diplomacy and an appallingly short sighted power grab.
All those countries still have a veto in the EU.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.