Analysis: Another undiplomatic spat in history of a relationship riven by resentment and rivalry

Plus ça change ÿ the row between Blair and Chirac is just the latest in a partnership that has all too often been anything but cordial

There is no row like an Anglo-French row. Foes or nominal friends, we have been going for each other at the slightest excuse for more than 1,000 years.

Or rather, recently we have mostly been going for them. We enjoy nothing more than to have new reasons to hate the French. Les Francais, for their part, seem mostly bored or politely amused by the episode but that is probably just another example of their treachery.

Until this month, we were apparently running out of ammunition. The froggies had deflated our righteous indignation (treachery again) by promising to close the Sangatte refugee camp and eat British beef. There was always Iraq, of course, but that was always a complicated, broadsheet quarrel. A proper, post-modern Anglo-French row needs to engage the tabloid heavy artillery, bombarding the French as an entire nation of beret-wearing, unwashed, snail-eating, swarthy, bandy-legged hypocrites (some wonderful footballers and football managers excepted).

Fortunately, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, the French President, contrived to have a verbal punch-up in Brussels just in time to fill the hiatus in cross-Channel warfare.

What a cheek. The President of the rudest nation on earth dared to call our sweet Prime Minister "very rude". President Chirac has now postponed a Franco-British summit in Le Touquet in December where the two governments were to discuss, among other things, a project that might make Admiral Lord Nelson spin on the top of his column.

There is a tentative plan for the two countries to develop and build together a new generation of aircraft carriers. Has this plan now met its Trafalgar? Probably not. The 1,000-year history of our quarrels is also a 1,000-year history of long-term national interests – and fundamental shared interests – finally reasserting themselves over real or exaggerated national differences.

In many respects, Franco-British relations are excellent. In recent weeks, the new French government has defused two long-standing disputes between Paris and London: the illegal French ban on British beef and the Sangatte camp near Calais. Until recently, the two governments were even co-operating behind the scenes on the US-Iraq crisis.

Officials in London, Paris and Brussels are, privately, astonished that two grown politicians should quarrel like fish-wives over such a standard piece of EU furniture as a Franco-British dispute on farm spending. On exactly the same subject President Chirac – then Prime Minister Chirac – said in a stage whisper at an EU summit in Brussels in 1987: "Does she [Margaret Thatcher] want my balls too?" This was treated at the time as a minor incident, not a cause for the kind of vituperation seen in the British press in recent days (which the French are convinced has been deliberately stoked by Downing Street). By contrast, the conservative, Chirac-supporting newspaper Le Figaro headed its witty and fair editorial on the subject: "A little quarrel between friends."

Against this background, the origins of the Blair-Chirac quarrel are at once obvious and somewhat mysterious.

Taking the obvious causes first, one can trace the recurrent patterns of Franco-British disputes, which go back respectively to Napoleon (at least) and Charles de Gaulle.

Nothing was set in concrete in the negotiations in Brussels last week. The whole question of how the enlargement of the EU to the east should be funded remains open. In the end – that is, some time after 2006 – France will have to accept less funding for its farmers and Britain will have to accept a lower EU rebate. Everyone knows that. Why such a high-profile quarrel? Mr Blair, who has staked a part of his reputation on putting Britain back at the "heart of Europe", was evidently angry at the resurgence of the old Franco-German recipe to pre-cook EU deals.

Fear of continental combinations has driven British policy since the 18th century. But why take that out on Mr Chirac, rather than Chancellor Gerhard Schröder? The Prime Minister lectured President Chirac – in a rather sanctimonious way, according to French officials – on the iniquities of the EU farm policy and its responsibility for damaging agriculture in the Third World. (In fact, the CAP, though still wrong-headed, is already much reformed and does not generate the market-distorting surpluses that it once did.) President Chirac took exception to Mr Blair's remarks, partly because he had been already irritated by what he regarded as the preaching tone of the Prime Minister's comments on Iraq a few days earlier. Mr Blair had said that Britain would join America in using force against Baghdad, even if the UN failed to agree a tough new resolution against Saddam Hussein.

At a time when a French compromise plan was gaining ground in the Security Council in New York, Mr Chirac regarded Mr Blair's intervention as deeply unhelpful.

This fits a persistent pattern of modern cross-channel mesententes, which goes back to the awkward wartime relationship between Winston Churchill and De Gaulle. Should Britain, when the chips are down, side with France and Europe; or with the United States? During the war, Churchill helped to create De Gaulle as a symbol of French resistance but grew infuriated with Le Généralwhen he insisted on defining, and defending, French interests, in conflict with allied ones. At one point, Churchill agreed an American plan to dump De Gaulle and had to be restrained by members of the British war cabinet.

De Gaulle carried the grudge after the war. He vetoed Britain's first attempt to join the Common Market in 1963, saying London would always side with the American view of the world, and not help to build an alternative European vision. The Blair-Chirac quarrel is directly in line of descent from the Churchill-De Gaulle and McMillan-De Gaulle quarrels of the past.

Yet the Brussels slanging match is also mysterious, in the way that personal chemistry between two people is always mysterious. This seems, to a large extent, to have been a spat between two men, rather than between two governments.

Both men have come to regard themselves (with some justice on both sides) as important international players in the US-Iraqi chess game. At first, they co-operated behind the scenes reasonably well. Mr Blair was America's all-purpose friend. Mr Chirac was America's frank critic and admirer. Both roles were useful and both helped to pull Washington away from instant war and towards the UN.

In recent days, Mr Blair and Mr Chirac appear to have become increasingly jealous and wary of one another's role in the Iraqi crisis.

This is partly based on a real divergence of view and partly on mutual jealousy. One would-be international statesman and fixer in Europe is all very well. Two is a crowd.