'Je t'aime moi non plus' v. 'Your 'avin a larf aintcha!' - Anglo-French Defence Agreement-

BBC coverage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOdSWZDyNgU

ITV coverage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5855wHTApnE






The recent treaty agreements between France and the UK (http://gu.com/p/2kzf8 ) has emerged out of a certain amount of economic necessity. The economic down turn has got strategic heads turning where some tentative costings can be made to some very large military budgets. After all the UK and France are the 3rd and 4th largest military forces in the world. Somehow both leaders have forged ahead to sign this treaty which will allow for a 10,000 expeditionary force, an aircraft carrier and joint nuclear testing. Cameron had to re-assure the US/the Pentagon, who suspected the motives for such a move, that the UK would still be under the US nuclear umbrella and that we would continue to buy American nukes. The treaties also allowed France to rejoin the NATO command structure for the first time since 1958 when De Gaulle protested at Eisenhower's control of the organization and left NATO to become independent of US control. Sarkozy has now decided that France should stop isolating itself and has been happy to make ouvertures toward a soupcon of military cooperation with 'Les Rosbifs' as they affectionatly call us. It also allows for the UK to act independently if it likes even though in recent history this has happened only twice; in Sierra Leone and in the Falklands. This is a brave new forging of a newly minted limited edition Anglo-French warrior on the world stage. However even this small step has raised the ire of Cameron's backbenchers one of whom Bernard Jenkin, a former shadow Tory defence minister, said that  "We cannot have a strategic fusion with a country that has historically, and still has, diametrically different strategic objectives on the world stage."