It cannot be a coincidence that the visits abroad by the president of France have featured Australia, India and now Nigeria, all better-off members of the British Commonwealth. Is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at all suspicious of what looks like an attempt to prise those nations away from the UK, regaining influence for France lost to Britain at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries? Macron also believes in an EU defence force, along with other trappings of a nation state. One suspects that, with Britain out of the way and imminent political upheaval in Germany, he sees it as France's historical destiny to lead a United States of Europe.
There is of course a tradition of French undermining British interests, even when that puts her in dubious moral territory. Sanctions against the white supremacist rule of Iain Smith in Rhodesia were weakened by breaches by companies in which the French state had an interest and more recently the begetters of the oppressive religious rule in Iran were given house-room. (Not that I think the Shah's tyranny was a good thing, but the Islamic Revolution did not replace it with anything much better.)
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