C\u2019est magnifique, mais ce n\u2019est pas la guerre. Captain Chris \u201cHunter-Killer\u201d Philp had been on patrol since first light in the Channel. While the rest of the country was still asleep, the Philpster was scanning the horizon for rubber dinghies full of illegal immigrants. Something he had never done in his previous life as immigration minister. Back then he had sought to rehouse new arrivals in hotels. Now he wanted to send them to a watery grave.<\/p>\n
It had been a quiet morning. Too quiet. Just the one sighting of a child with a rubber ring paddling off the beach in Boulogne. But Hunter-Killer was taking no chances. All it takes is one child and before long there will be hundreds of thousands making the crossing with swimming aids bought from the local Carrefour. So the Philpster had called in the RAF. Minutes later, a Typhoon FGR4 had blasted the kid out of the water. Job done. Pour encourager les autres.<\/p>\n
Half an hour later, all hell broke loose. A French warship had appeared starboard. The next thing Hunter-Killer heard was the sound of 17 indistinct pops in the distance. \u201cGet down,\u201d he shouted to his crew. \u201cWe\u2019re under attack.\u201d Weirdly, no one on board the Philpster\u2019s MTB disguised as a fishing vessel seemed remotely worried. How come they were so slow to sense danger? There again, few had the finely tuned antennae of the Philpster. Those years of training with the Special Boat Service had paid off.<\/p>\n
Hunter-Killer threw himself on the floor of the wheelhouse, waiting for the gunshots to stop. \u201cI think it\u2019s safe now,\u201d a deckhand said. \u201cIt was just some French sailor firing some shots from a handgun away from us into the sea. It wasn\u2019t as if he was aiming at us or anything. He was probably just test-firing. It\u2019s no big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t understand,\u201d squeaked Captain Philpster. \u201cThis was a definite attempt by the French to intimidate me. Typical of Johnny Foreigner to send out a warship to track the shadow home secretary. They don\u2019t like it up \u2019em. They\u2019ve probably got special guns that fire round corners. So you think they\u2019re shooting in a harmless direction but the bullets turn 90 degrees in flight. I came within a whisker of being hit. Not that anyone gets to intimidate Hunter-Killer. Help! Help!\u201d<\/p>\n
The crew looked rather nonplussed. Most of them hadn\u2019t even heard the shots \u2013 \u201che was probably using a silencer\u201d, said the Philpster \u2013 let alone had any idea they had come under serious attack. But Hunter-Killer was adamant. The Frenchies had been out to eliminate him. He had got too close to stopping the small boat crossings and Macron would never stand for that. So he was prepared to stop at nothing. Even risk starting a global conflict. Well, it had ended badly for Napoleon and it would end badly for Macron. Nor should the French forget that it had been the English who saved them in the second world war. Well, we wouldn\u2019t make that mistake again.<\/p>\n
\u201cSacr\u00e9 bleu!\u201d said one member of Border Force. \u201cThere are often exercises at sea involving the Royal or the French navy, and shots are occasionally fired, usually using blanks. This may be nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Philpster ordered him to keep quiet. The last thing he wanted was any collaborators speaking in French. Careless talk costs vies. He pulled the burner phone out of his pocket and speed-dialled Kemi. \u201cI\u2019m under attack,\u201d he gasped. \u201cEven though the French aren\u2019t shooting at me, they are definitely shooting at me. They don\u2019t want me to stop any small boats crossing the Channel, even though I haven\u2019t yet seen any small boats. We need to be on our guard. The smuggling gangs must now be using invisible dinghies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kemi\u2019s eyes lit up. If only she was prime minister, she would be able to launch a tactical first nuclear strike on Calais. OK, there might be some collateral damage in Kent but it would still be worth it. Instead, she had to order the Philpster to disengage with the enemy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t do that,\u201d said Hunter-Killer. \u201cWhile most politicians run from danger, I am trained to run towards it. So what I will do is film a clip of me being extraordinarily brave by doing nothing and then phone the French embassy to complain. If only they put as much effort into intimidating the people smugglers as they put into intimidating me. Not that I was intimidated. But it would be good to see the French navy also firing shots in the opposite direction to the dinghies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"C\u2019est magnifique, mais ce n\u2019est pas la guerre. Captain Chris \u201cHunter-Killer\u201d Philp had been on patrol since first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-716204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}