Nothing is going to be acheived by this visit as Macron just doesn't care

Given the armies of well-paid civil servants briefing our Government ministers around the clock it is baffling how they are always the last to grasp what the man/woman/non-binary on the Clapham Omnibus figured out long ago.

So we have a Prime Minister and a Cabinet who needed five Supreme Court judges to explain to them that a human being in possession of a penis is probably not a woman. (Unless that woman is Lorena Bobbit of course.)

We have a Parliament peppered with MPs who needed a four-year study to tell them cutting the breasts off confused schoolgirls in the name of gender fluidity was closer to Nazi experimentation than health care.

And now, seven years after the crossings of small boats packed with illegal migrants became a major problem for Britain, those who seek to rule us have found out that if you stick a pen-knife in an inflatable dinghy, they pop.

Problem solved.

It really was that easy.

Of course the whole thing, the French police video from the weekend, has a whiff of stage management for our benefit about it, to somehow help us welcome today's visit by Emmanuel Macron.

Not many of us, I suspect, do.

While all we know for sure is that since Starmer took office, and promised to smash the gangs, 44,000 illegal migrants have arrived on our beaches from France.

And that the French have popped ONE boat.

And we, or rather YOU, have paid the French £500m for that privilege. Le bargain it is not.

I hate to be uncharitable, but I, for one, would send Macron home in a dinghy.

Nothing is going to be achieved by this ridiculous summit which will only serve to highlight Macron's monumental unwillingness to take the problem seriously.

First off, we keep being told "maritime law" forbids French authorities to intercept boats the moment they hit the water - even if they are in water six inches deep. But that "maritime law" is French law! And if there was any real will to stop the exodus of slightly undesirable young men from their beaches they would have changed it long ago.

But why would they?

The nationalities crossing on small boats are, we are told, 24 times more likely to end up in prison than UK citizens. Most are single men with no cultural touchstone to Britain.

Brain surgeons, cancer specialists, and captains of industry are conspicuously thin on the ground. As are women of course.

Macron also knows only too well he will be able to spout fine words and promises today safe in the knowledge his EU bosses - and their rules - will absolutely prevent him achieving any sort of solution.

Five of the bloc's 27 nations - including Italy, Spain and Greece - have already expressed "serious concerns" over any Anglo-French deal because they know full well deported migrants would try and settle in their countries.

"We take note - with a degree of surprise - of the reported intention of France to sign a bilateral readmission arrangement," they wrote in a letter to Brussels while a seriously peed-off Italian PM Giorgia Meloni accused France of "aggression" and "betrayal".

Their opposition to a solution will soon be backed by the rest of the bloc.

Brexit or no Brexit, Europe loves that Britain is a convenient dumping ground for jobless chancers from across the world.

170,000 since 2018.

Housed, fed and paid by the British tax payer.

Meanwhile, a new report out today shows 4.5m actual British kids are living with "Dickensian levels of poverty".

It's a terrible cliche to say "charity begins at home" but when you're a nation running out of money surely the choice is not very difficult?

Hotel bills for Starmer's "strangers" or raising British kids out of poverty? Bit of a no-brainer that.

Today Starmer - who scrapped the only deterrent we had in the Rwanda deportation scheme, the moment he set foot in Downing Street - will announce some cockeyed "one-in-one-out" scheme with Macron.

This morning on LBC Nick Ferarri asked Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander if she could explain it.

She couldn't.

But that's okay Heidi, no-one can.

Me, I might just take my trusty Scouts' pen-knife down to Pas-de-Calais.