Boris Johnson aides insist his French 'foot-on-table' moment was just a joke

It’s the moment that summed up many Brits’ image of our Tory Prime Minister.

Splayed out with an entitled look in the Elysee Palace, his foot propped up on a coffee table, Boris Johnson posed languidly next to a long-suffering French President.

“They clearly don’t teach good manners at Eton,” fumed Twitter user Nia Trow.

But while a picture may say a thousand words, it seems this one, at least, didn’t tell the whole story.

Video of the moment shows the Prime Ministerial foot touched the Presidential table only for a second – and it was in response to a joke by Emmanuel Macron.

Aides to the UK leader insisted it was no foot-in-mouth moment, saying it was simply a joke after a long lunch and a walk round the Palace gardens.

“There was a good atmosphere between them by then,” an aide told The Sun.

And a source confirmed to the Mirror: “It was all very light-hearted”.

One ally of the PM said it showed a “rapport” between the two men – and suggested those who think it was a snub are “showing signs of Brexit derangement syndrome”.

Even without yesterday’s being a row, Boris Johnson has no shortage of embarrassing gaffes being caught on camera in the past.

At a packed Tory conference event in 2017, he said the Libyan city of Sirte had a bright future – as soon as they “clear the dead bodies away”.

Also in 2017, he was scolded through gritted teeth by Britain’s Ambassador to Myanmar when he recited a pro-Colonial poem in a sacred Buddhist temple.

And he was berated at a Sikh temple for talking about whisky exports to India – despite alcohol being forbidden in the faith.

Yesterday Emmanuel Macron rejected Mr Johnson’s call to ditch the Irish Backstop, describing the Brexit deal condition as “indispensable”.

The French President also shot down German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s suggestion that the Prime Minister had a 30-day window to find an alternative.

Speaking alongside Mr Johnson in Paris yesterday, Mr Macron said: “We will not find a new agreement within 30 days that will be very different from the existing one.”

His position makes it less likely the PM will clinch a revised agreement to avoid a no-deal Brexit on October 31.

And Ms Merkel pulled back yesterday on her suggestion of the 30-day timetable, claiming the September 20 deadline was merely “an allegory for being able to do it in a short period of time”.

Mr Johnson said he admired Mrs Merkel’s “can-do spirit” and said he wants to leave the bloc “sensibly and pragmatically”, insisting that he wants an exit deal.

And he appeared to challenge Mr Macron on possible customs posts and inspection points on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic – the UK’s only land border with the EU.

The PM said: “I think the technical solutions are readily available and they have been discussed at great length.

“You can have trusted trader schemes, you can have electronic pre-clearing for goods moving across the border – and I just want to repeat one crucial thing: under no circumstances will the UK be putting checks at the frontier. We don’t think it is necessary from the point of view of the EU to do that to protect the integrity of the single market. We think there are other ways of doing that.

“We have got, I think, adequate time to do it – let’s get on and do it.”

There has been no physical border between the Republic and Northern Ireland since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the 30-year Troubles.

But some fear customs posts or inspection points will be needed to stop smuggling following Brexit.

The Backstop is aimed at avoiding a hard border if we fail to agree a future trading deal and would keep us in the customs union, which Brexiteers say would mean we had not left the EU.

The PM stressed we would not “be instituting, imposing checks or controls of any kind”. He told Mr Macron: “We think there are ways of protecting the integrity of the single market and allowing the UK to exit the EU whole and entire and perfect, as it were.”

But Mr Macron said the Withdrawal Agreement and Backstop were “not just technical constraints or legal quibbling” but “genuine, indispensable guarantees” to preserve stability in Ireland and the single market.

Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: “ Boris Johnson has had a disastrous and pointless trip, during which he has achieved precisely nothing.

“It feels like Groundhog Day. Mr Johnson has heard the simple facts of Brexit just as Theresa May before him.”