CHANNEL CONCORDE

by RAY FLEMING
So the entente cordiale is still in good shape, after all. At their pre-G8 love-in at the French town of Evian on Monday, President Sarkozy of France and prime minister Brown of Britain reached agreement on everything. “President Sarkozy, mon ami, you are truly a force of nature” gushed the normally taciturn Brown as he hailed his host's “drive and determination to make the world a safer place, a more prosperous place, a greener place.” For his part, forgetting their slight spat at the G20 summit in April, Sarkozy said that Britain could count on France's “unreserved support” over the attacks by the Iranian leadership. “We will do whatever the British want us to do,“ he said expansively. It is tempting to wonder whether the leaders had added a little something to the Evian water that would undoubtedly have been on the conference table. But an eminently sensible agreement seems to have been struck over the problem of would-be immigrants to Britain camping in poor conditions near Calais. Britain agreed to tighten border controls to deter them and France undertook to begin forced and voluntary repatriations. It is in keeping with the slightly unreal nature of these talks that the man who negotiated this deal was immigration minister Phil Woolas who was so comprehensively outplayed by Joanna Lumley over the Gurkhas.