This podcast is sponsored by Canacord Genuity Wealth Management, award-winning wealth managers who go above and beyond to support and guide you.

Visit can-dowealth.com to start building your wealth with confidence.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, Expectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyfe.

So James, the week began with warnings of an imminent fishing war between the UK and France, but those threats now appear to have retreated somewhat. Yes, so this weekend,

David Frost and Clement Bone were indulging the rather undiplomatic Twitter spat with David

Frost having a long Twitter thread about his point of view and the UK point of view on the fishing

crisis, then Clement Bone writing a kind of point by point refutation of it and things that are all part of the bad, the kind of diplomatic ill will between the UK and France.

But there is now some progress, which is that David Frost is going to Paris on Thursday to see Clement Bone, who is Macron's Europe minister, and is very politically close to Macron in the way that Frost is politically close to Johnson.

The talks, not just on the fishing issue, but also on the Northern Ireland Protocol, France is one of the most hardline states on this question.

And I think the question then becomes, does France take any of the steps that it was threatening in terms of extra checks on lorries or not?

It's not doing that at the moment.

And has France decided to kind of de-escalate,

realizing that it had maybe got a little bit far ahead on its skis,

and also that there might be other ways to get some of this information.

I mean, there's also a tension, which is that one of the problems, I think, is the UK side

is saying, look, some of these French boats that claim they were fishing in these waters on this time, commercially available data, suggests that their description of where they were on those dates is not entirely accurate.

So, but I think the bigger question is, does this meeting between Frost and Commonwealth Bone

kind of actually improve things on a fishing front, but also create a slightly more

constructive attitude around the Northern Ireland approach score? At the moment, the UK and

EU positions seem quite entrenched and an agreement seems quite far away on Monday morning we had

Zafcovic the vice president, commission vice president dealing with this issue writing the telegraph

...