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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator' Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Isabel Harbman

and I'm joined by Katie Bors and James Forsyth. Well, we have a new front being opened in the

Boris Johnson versus Emmanuel Macron bickering, which is a report that the French president

called Boris Johnson a clown.

James, do you think Boris Johnson is going to be that upset by that as a term of endearment?

I think it says something about the state of Anglo-French relations that, first of all,

that this report appeared in.

And then when the elizet was asked about it, it just got a no comment,

which is everyone is taking essentially as a confirmation that Macron did make the remarks.

And I think things are very bad right now in Anglo-French relations. Now, the kind of optimist view would be,

oh, look, just wait for the French presidential election to happen next spring. And once Macron has been re-elected, then things will improve.

Another slightly different take, depending on who you think is more or less responsible for this

row, is to imagine that, you know, once there's a new British prime minister, maybe relations

will improve.

But I think there is actually a more serious underlying problem

in Anglo-French relations, which is that they have very different views on how Europe should

respond to this US pivot to the Indo-Pacific. I think the UK's view is that, you know, that it's

kind of the job to kind of hold the line in Europe

...