Mr Blair urged the rapid creation of a permanent French-British military rapid-deployment force

Mr Blair urged the rapid creation of a permanent French-British military rapid-deployment force. This is an interesting idea but has been under discussion in Paris and London for several years. Mr Blair called for the 90-year-old Entente Cordiale to be recreated as “une entente reelle, une entente profonde” (a real understanding, a deep understanding).The specifics of what this might mean were a little thin. Mr Blair and the French Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, are to set up a joint task-force to study ways of helping small businesses. His appeal for the “re-founding” of the friendship between Britain and France was sincerely meant, according to someone who worked on the various drafts. Jokes about Socialism may be fine in Blairist New Britain but the ideal and the word – if not the practice – arestill treated with reverence on the French left. When he worked in the French capital as a waiter 25 years ago, the Prime Minister recalled, he was supposed to put all his tips in a common pot.

It was a couple of weeks before he realised that he was the only person doing so. “It was my first lesson in applied socialism”.
There was thunderous applause from Gaullist and liberal deputies; a deafening and stony-faced silence on the left side of the hemicycle. Mr Blair, speaking in convincing French, made something of an ideological faux pas at the beginning of his 35-minute speech with a joking reminiscence of his student days in Paris. His account of the Blairist “third way” was applauded, cheered and whooped by parliamentarians of the French right.

It was received at best politely, and for long passages in silence, by the Socialist and Communist deputies. The Prime Minister apparently wanted it to be a significant speech, not just a piece of rhetorical wall-paper. Tony Blair’s speech to the National Assembly in Paris yesterday had gone through several drafts. Those coming from Belgium had had contact with the police there, though it was not clear whether they had applied for asylum.Passengers boarding the Eurostar at Brussels are not subject to immigration checks.. It was a speech with something for everyone but one which delighted, most of all, the beleaguered French centre-right.