What to take away from Macron & Johnson's comments and back-slapping on steps of the Elysée palace? Macron is well aware of a temptation in some UK quarters to blame France as the bad guy scuppering Brexit plans, so he put the ball back into Johnson's court (1) He backed Merkel that London must come forward with its promised concrete proposals for the UK's exit from the EU "within 30 days" - now up to UK to provide a backstop alternative which fits current withdrawal agreement & respects red lines on Ireland & single market (2)

Macron just spent 2 hours with reporters in Paris. Was very firm before meeting Johnson tomorrow. Here's what he said: Johnson's demand to renegotiate UK's exit is "not an option" (1) Macron said scrapping Irish backstop was impossible and would give EU an unacceptable choice between protecting its internal market or preserving peace in Ireland (2)

Went back to north west England to look at political fallout from Brexit chaos from European view
Some things I noticed -
Britain has a level of disillusionment with the political system that is greater than in almost all other EU countries & growing 1/

theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/m… For a long time, Europe saw Britain as an exception to rise of the populism, without big movements based on the 'people versus the corrupt elite'
Three years on from Leave vote, Brexit Party shows that's changing
2/

Céline, 43, who works in the catering service at a hospital outside Paris, fled from tear-gas on the Champs Elysées with her husband & daughter. ‘The crowd was peaceful, and then they fired at us,’ she said. 1/6 They were leaving Paris to head back to their toll-booth barricade near Mantes-la-Jolie. ‘We’re not here for tear-gas or violence, but to make ourselves heard’. They had been demonstrating regularly at the motorway toll for 3 weeks. ‘We’ll keep going’

Dan Lodi, 70, a Corsican retired furniture salesman, lives in the Paris banlieue. He has come to Paris every Saturday since the gilets janues demos began.

“I was on the May 1968 barricades in Paris for three weeks when I was 20 and now I’m a gilet jaune aged 70," he said. 1/5 Lodi said: "In France we’ve been having revolutions since 1789, we got rid of the king but we’re still fighting because the rich still have power and inequality is still there”… 2/5

Some thoughts after spending time with gilets jaunes on roundabouts & toll-booth barricades in the south west and also from spending time with gilets jaunes from the north east 1/10 Some in Paris have suggested all gilets jaunes are driven by fake-news and conspiracy theories on Facebook, & are somehow uneducated. That was not what I found and it would be a mistake to think that… 2/10