Leading the sabre-rattling that added fire to today s fishing war in Jersey is Emmanuel Macron s hard-left maritime minister, a fisherman s daughter and Brexit hater who has made inflammatory threats to cut off the island s electricity.
Annick Girardin, a member of the Radical Party of the Left, is a straight-talking political street fighter who in a previous role led efforts to defend the French language over the growing global influence of English - an abiding obsession of the country s political class.
The 56-year-old, once dubbed the Pirate of Hope in a TV documentary praising her radical credentials, is MP for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, an isolated, weather-beaten French overseas territory of just over 6,000 souls off the coast of Newfoundland, where she grew up and gave birth to her first child, a daughter, aged 15.
Au revoir! Two Royal Navy ships send French fishermen scurrying back home from Jersey after one of them RAMS a British boat in fishing row - as gunboats prepare to return to port in the UK but remain on standby
Fishermen said they were ready to restage the Battle of Trafalgar as they descended on harbour this morning
David Sellam, head of the Normandy sea authority, said: We re ready for war. We can bring Jersey to its knees
But by 1.30pm navigation charts showed the armada had given in and was sailing back towards home waters
Observer said French boats blockading the harbour had returned home but were not dropping their demands