perfidious Albion

"Well, why not - let English taxpayers subsidise our free prescriptions, lower rates, no water charges, lower tuition fees and free prescriptions.. but hey, how dare you guys starve us of funding #Perfidious Albion," she wrote.

In a relationship where both sides often fall back on cliches about the other, Castex was harking back to the centuries-old French insult of “Perfidious Albion,” a nation that can never be trusted.

On publication, anti-war US politicians seized on this book as proof that perfidious Albion was trying to drag the country into another war.

Francois warned the EU that trying to keep the UK in the bloc for longer would create “perfidious Albion on speed” and a “Trojan horse within the EU, which will utterly derail all your attempts to pursue a more federal project.”

Mr. Byers is the author, most recently, of the novel “Perfidious Albion.”