Britain’s relations with France are supposed to be at their lowest ebb since Waterloo, or maybe Agincourt.
So we should be grateful that a recent ceremony between the Royal Navy and their French counterparts went off peacefully. On 11th January, in the sort of thick Channel fog that used to get headline-writers informing us that the continent is ‘cut off’, command of the NATO Maritime High Readiness Force passed from France to Britain for the next 12 months.
The ship on which the flag-raising took place –, whose active career the Navy projects will last 50 years or more. That’s about £62 million a year if the reported up-front costs for two carriers of £6.2 billion is accurate.
