Marine Le Pen’s plan for a new partnership with a post-Brexit Britain is dangerous for France, ignorant and completely misunderstands the basis of British alliances, Peter Ricketts, the former UK national security adviser and UK ambassador to France, has told the Guardian.
He said the far-right presidential hopeful’s proposals represented a plan for French isolation from its main strategic partners, the US, Germany and the UK.
In her defence manifesto, Le Pen held out the hope of a restored Lancaster House treaty, the Franco-British defence cooperation treaty first signed in 2010, and underlined this by illustrating her defence plans with a picture of the union jack and tricolour flags.
Lord Ricketts described her proposals “as ignorant, superficial and completely misunderstanding the basis of France’s cooperations with all her allies”. “It is a recipe for disaster for France,” he said. “There is a lingering assumption in her proposals that a Brexit Britain will be a natural ally for a nationalist Le Pen France.
“But what her proposals bring out is that France under her leadership would be a very dangerous ally for the UK with her plan of leaving the Nato military command structure, renegotiating its alliance with America, being much more nationalistic in its purchase of defence equipment and continuing a strategic partnership with Russia in all sorts of areas.”
He added: “It is frankly inconceivable that she would be able to drive a wedge between the US and the UK.
“She has an idea that if the UK wants to have a close alliance with a Le Pen France, the UK should show goodwill by buying French equipment, such as the Exocet, and ditching US defence equipment. There is also talk of abandoning the Franco-British Joint Expeditionary Force since she sees it of no practical purpose.
“No British government or indeed any Nato ally is going to touch a defence relationship with France on those grounds. It shows a complete misunderstanding if she thinks Britain would be interested in a defence relationship on Le Pen’s basis.”
He added: “France’s closest military allies are the US, the UK and Germany, yet her suggestion is the foundations of all these agreements can and will be changed. It is a recipe for complete isolation for France. She treats Germany [with] short shrift. The US has to accept France’s withdrawal from Nato command structure whilst Britain in some way has to buy France’s partnership by buying French defence equipment, and not that of the US.
“Apart from her relationship with Russia, I don’t see how any of France’s traditional alliances would survive her presidency. It would have been far better if she had been honest in her defence manifesto and replaced the union jack with the Russian flag, because that is the only potential ally she is likely to find.”
Le Pen has already insisted that bilateral, as opposed to multilateral, relations will form the centrepiece of French foreign policy. But Ricketts said she seemed intent on undermining all of France’s most important bilateral relationships.
Although Le Pen has insisted she is not interested in Frexit, her defence manifesto contains echoes of Boris Johnson’s Global Britain strategy paper by suggesting that France needs to extend its influence in the globe in new areas, including the Indo-Pacific. She seems willing to overlook the UK decision to form an alliance in the Indo-Pacific with Australia and the US, even though it carved France out of the region.
