David Miliband

Foreign Secretary

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Monday 06 July, 2009

Entente Formidable

The Anglo-French joint work of recent years defies the stereotypes of countries always at each other's throats. I've always thought that made no sense for the modern world, when we have moved closer together through shared experience and the interchange of people. France shows the nonsense of believing that European identity comes at the cost of national identity. It also shows that we have strong allies for those parts of the European project that will remain inter-governmental.

Myself, French Minister of Economic Affairs, Industry & Employment Christine Lagarde and Lord Mandelson  

The Anglo-French summit in Evian today will show the extent of joint working, from the economy to migration to foreign policy. I will be working with Bernard Kouchner on Iran, Burma and Somalia policy amongst others. We are both members of the Security Council. We need to set a strong course together.

Posted at 15:55 06 July 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[2]

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France and UK can be close friend but the two countries have a lot of difference and this friendship won't last ever as the precedent centuries.

Posted by good on July 06, 2009 at 07:38 PM BST #

it's easy to forget that it's really not that long ago that this society would have been up in arms at just the notion that a British government would want to cooperate on anything that involved a French one. you prob' would only have to go back to the early nineties to have read outrage pieces in the Daily Mail over yesterdays attempts to reach agreements on actions that are beneficial to both our nations and enraged accusations about sacrificing and infringing on our sovereignty. so progress is def' being made. slight prob' though, the French want us to stop incentivising refugee's to come here, we want that but you don't. so good on the French and here's to hoping that they can manage to do something that even constant election wipe outs couldn't, persuade you to get sensible on immigration.

Posted by sarahsmith232 on July 07, 2009 at 01:55 PM BST #

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