Prenez un grip, Mr Turnbull
For sheer cussedness, it would be hard to beat Malcolm Turnbull’s unhelpful attempt to inject himself into the dispute between Scott Morrison and Emmanuel Macron over the cancelled deal to buy French submarines.
Only the former prime minister can say why he thought it a good idea to take the French President’s side and describe Mr Morrison’s conduct as “sneaky, shameful and duplicitous”.
In doing so, he has disregarded conventions observed by most former holders of the office that they eschew such perverse attacks on their successors, especially when national security is involved.
Mr Turnbull may have been the prime minister when the 2016 contract for the French Attack-class submarines was signed, but even by his own standards of contrariness, his invective in asserting that Mr Morrison “did very elaborately and duplicitously deceive France” went too far.
It could not have been less in Australia’s interests. And given the reality that, as Mr Morrison explained on Monday, the French submarines would have been obsolete even before the first of them entered the water, many will wonder why Mr Turnbull sought to involve himself in a controversy that inevitably draws attention to his role in ordering them.
It is unfortunate, too, that in his enthusiasm to condemn Mr Morrison and align himself with Mr Macron’s charge that the Prime Minister “lied”, Mr Turnbull failed to mention a crucial aspect of the dispute – that central to Mr Macron’s irrational dummy spit is the battle he faces to win another term in next April’s presidential election.
The loss of what was regarded as France’s “deal of the century” – the $90bn deal to build the Australian submarines – has incensed French unions and made Mr Macron’s path to a second term more difficult.
Significantly, he is on his Gallic high horse not only with Australia but also with Britain, where he has embarked on a similarly irrational campaign over post-Brexit fishing rights for French boats.
He is wrong on just about every issue in the dispute. British fishing boats have been barred from French ports, transport trucks going to France have been impeded, and the island of Jersey’s electricity supplies threatened. No wonder Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, a columnist in a British newspaper, has referred to Mr Macron as “the pint-sized Napoleon”, while British PM Boris Johnson has advised Mr Macron to “prenez un grip” (Franglais for “get a grip”).
It is unfortunate that Joe Biden, like Mr Turnbull, has been less than helpful by implicitly siding with Mr Macron’s peeved attack on Mr Morrison. Recent events are not a good look for Australian diplomacy. More should have been done to avoid the current war of words between two countries that should be closely working in lockstep to defend the Indo-Pacific. After the innumerable occasions when France has acted against US interests (in 1986, when Francois Mitterrand refused to allow US bombers to fly through French airspace to strike military targets in Libya, there was a campaign in the US against French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”), Mr Biden should have been less eager to sing from Mr Macron’s self-serving song sheet.
Closer to home are memories of the 40 years of French nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa and the perfidious 1985 Auckland sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. In the interests of France’s territories in the Indo-Pacific, Mr Macron needs to show statesmanship and understanding of the strategic dangers China poses to the region.
As Mr Johnson said, he needs to prenez un grip. So does Mr Turnbull.
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