State visit for French president who does nothing to stop migrants boating across the Channel

Thousands and thousands of migrants from across the world climb into small rubber dingies on the beaches of Calais, goaded on by criminal smugglers and generally watched by inactive French police officers, and try to make the perilous Channel crossing to Britain. It has been going on for years, large numbers have drowned, but still they come, especially when the weather is clement. They pack into the boats in their dozens, with no room to move. Still, the Gendarmerie just watch. Occasionally they take action, like last week when they saw a boat was so top-heavy they feared all would probably drown mid-Channel and a police officer stepped forward with a knife and slashed the rubber hull and it sank in shallow waters. The migrants stepped out and retreated across the beach. But this was just one occasion. Mostly, the boats leave the Calais beaches and no one stops them. The rubber boat that was slashed with a knife was almost exclusively packed with young, fit-looking men, with a few women to make up the numbers. So it wasn't a boatload of starving women and children from Sudan, or petrified-looking children from war zones. These were hearty young men who no doubt returned the next day and climbed into another boat. So, as President Emmanuel Macron enjoys the hospitality of the king and queen and the British people and travels around in a golden coach and walks on red carpets, perhaps he might reflect that it's time after all the promises actually to stop these boats from leaving the French shores. Will it happen? I doubt it.