12 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleEwan SomervillePolitical reporter
Getty ImagesPrime Minister Andy Burnham has praised the UK-EU relationship as he holds talks with French President Emmanuel Macron about issues such as small boat crossings in the English Channel and defence.
The pair shook hands and posed for photographs alongside their wives outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday morning.
They are discussing “shared challenges” including the rise of “mega dinghies” crossing the Channel illegally, which the Conservatives say shows the UK government has failed to “smash the gangs”.
Burnham said it was “so fitting” that Macron was his first overseas visitor in Downing Street since becoming PM in July, describing him as “our nearest neighbour and close friend Emmanuel”.
Reuters“It shows what collaboration can achieve, just as we are also showing on Ukraine, on small boats, and also on strengthening the UK-EU relationship. So I look forward to discussing those themes further with you today,” Burnham added.
Macron’s visit to the UK was primarily to mark the Bayeux Tapestry’s loan to the British Museum. The French leader met King Charles at the museum on Wednesday, ahead of the medieval tapestry going on public display next week.
In bilateral talks on Thursday, Burnham and Macron are discussing not just small boats but also the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as defence and EU co-operation.
But the “mega dinghies” crossing the Channel illegally – first seen earlier in August with a 15-metre long vessel carrying a record 230 migrants towards the UK – are arguably the most pressing challenge facing the pair.
It follows a summer when the overall number of small boat arrivals in the UK fell to a seven-year low.
Downing Street says 45 extra police officers are being deployed to French beaches in a “surge team” to tackle larger dinghies with more people packed onto them.
Earlier on Tuesday, Home Office Minister Anna Turley said the officers were “just part of the armoury” of more than 1,000 officers on northern French beaches who are now doing “actual intervention” in the water.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that videos in recent weeks “show them going to the boats, slashing them, pushing people back, being bombarded with stones and bricks and coming under a lot of challenge to do that, so they are intervening”.
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp has called for British financial support for the French authorities to be withheld until they prevent all embarkations in shallow waters on their side of the Channel.
In a post on X, in which he said he was “do[ing] politics differently”, Burnham laid out the latest small boat, returns and asylum hotel figures, describing smuggling gangs as a “shared European challenge”.
At the same time as Macron arrived in Downing Street, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch held a press conference to pile further pressure on Burnham to set out a timeline to spending 3% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) on defence.
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