Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched a blistering attack on the French president – accusing him of “weaponising” the small boats crisis.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described French President Emmanuel Macron as a “nuisance” determined to “punish Britain for leaving the EU”.
The former Conservative prime minister accused the French president of using the ongoing small boat crisis “as a weapon” while in office.
In his upcoming book, Johnson recalled how he proposed a new road link across the English Channel to connect the two countries but claimed he “improvised”.
However, he claims Macron suddenly said “no” and dismissed the idea.
In an extract from Johnson’s “Unleashed” published in the Mail on Sunday, the former prime minister said Macron was “suddenly horrified by the idea of ​​all those greedy Brits storming across the bridge into a relatively sparsely populated country”.
Johnson went on to say that Macron was “personally appealing” but seemed determined to punish Britain for leaving the European Union.
He wrote: “Macron was personally appealing and we often agreed on important issues, but he said in earnest that Britain’s departure from the EU needed to be punished.
“I’m sorry about some of the issues, but that’s why I suspected he was the real troublemaker.”
Johnson also said it seemed “at least possible” that Macron was raising the issue of migrants crossing the border in small doses. The boats are coming, the “weapons.”
He said the French president seemed to be allowing this “enough to infuriate the British public and to undermine one of the most important facts of Brexit, which was that we got back control of the border.”