The UK’s age-old “frenemy” relationship with France never fails to ignite passion, and no more so than when the frequent fishing wars are thrown into the mix. Post-Brexit, there is undoubtedly added piquancy to the cross-Channel insults. “After le showdown, now it’s LE SURRENDER”, trumpeted the Daily Mail, after France retreated from threats to clog up exports and ban UK fishers from landing catches on its coast in the latest row over licences. Other tabloid headlines evoked similar sentiment – “Le Surrender” (Metro); “Le Climbdown” (Express). From the hundred years war of the late middle ages through to the 19th-century Napoleonic wars, beyond the signing of the entente cordiale in 1904 and to the present fishing dispute, the UK’s relationship with France has had its rocky moments. The most recent “fishing wars” have provided an excuse for metaphors, and columns revisiting the Allies’ second world war liberation of France, to be dusted down and re-employed as they always are in Britain’s spats with its near neighbour – with French-baiting Franglais an irresistible element. “Clambusters”, railed he Sun, neatly melding the second world war and seafood, after Jean Castex, the French prime minister, wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, last week saying the UK should be shown it caused more harm to leave the EU than to remain. More conflict imagery was dispensed by Clément Beaune, France’s Europe minister, after the Scottish-registered scallop dredger Cornelis Gert Jan was seized in Le Havre. “Now we need to speak the language of force,” Beaune told French television. “Unfortunately, it’s the only language the British government understands.” The impounding of the British vessel was a dream for headline writers. “Done like a S-kipper,” said the Sun. “Ship’s hit fan,” shouted the Daily Star. “Go on Macron, blow up that boat and shock us out of our shellfish behaviour,” ran one Sunday Times article. Others urged the EU to “Tell Macron to sling his hook” and to “reel in maverick Macron”. Boris Johnson, who greeted France’s fury over a new AUKUS military pact between the UK, US and Australia with the Franglais “donnez-moi un break”, has also been unable to resist the odd pun. “We have bigger fish to fry,” he said, in a lame joke ahead of meeting the French president at the recent G20 and ongoing Cop26. Fish puns were much in evidence as recently as May. “Fish and ships: UK flexes its mussels,” is how the Sun reported Johnson’s deployment of gunboat diplomacy by dispatching two Royal Navy patrol vessels to Jersey after French trawlers threatened to blockade the port of St Helier. This dispute is the latest in a long line with France over fishing, including the Great Scallop War, or guerre de la coquille, which in October 2012 led to a confrontation between French and British vessels off Le Havre over a difference in fishing restrictions. A second Scallop War in 2018 involved fishing boats colliding and projectiles being hurled. For now, though, France has de-escalated. Or, as the Sun put it: “They blink – it’s trawl over.”