Macron’s fighting talk on fishing is buoyed by far-right election threats

Analysis: British government is not entirely innocent but Paris knows forceful rhetoric should only go so far

In January 2017, Emmanuel Macron, in third place in the race to be the next president of France and seen by some as an electoral bubble waiting to burst, staged a photo opportunity in the fish market of Le Guilvinec in Brittany. Brexit will not go well because Brexit cannot go well," Macron told fishers who had raised their concerns about the future. But I'll make [the fishing problem] a red line in our negotiations with the UK."

Macron's seizing of the Elysee Palace later that year was hugely buoyed up by the turnout in the coastal region. Close to a third of voters in Brittany gave him their vote in the crucial first round of the 2017 contest, a greater proportion than in any other region of France.