Liz Truss ducked tackling Emmanuel Macron over migrants making the perilous journey from France to Britain during 30 minutes of talks today.
The Prime Minister held half an hour of formal negotiations with the French President on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
But she failed to raise the issue of migrants boarding small boats for the dangerous voyage across the Dover Strait - the world’s busiest shipping lane.
During the Tory leadership campaign, Ms Truss claimed the “jury is out” on whether the French President was Britain’s “friend or foe”.
Asked following the PM and President’s meeting if she had now decided, Ms Truss’s spokesman said she “has talked about wanting to have a constructive relationship with President Macron and certainly that was the tenor and tone of the bilateral meeting they had in the last couple of hours”.
After the meeting, Mr Macron said: "I now believe in proof, in results.
"There is a will to re-engage, to move on and to show that we are allies and friends in a complex world.”
A record number of migrants have reached UK shores this year, with more than 29,700 arriving so far compared with 28,526 in the whole of 2021.
Asked as she flew to New York what help she would request from the French Premier to help tackle the crisis, Ms Truss insisted: “I want to have a constructive relationship with France - of course that means working together on the issue of migration.”
However, No10 admitted today that Ms Truss did not even bring it up.
Instead, the pair discussed the war in Ukraine and energy security.
The PM’s spokesman said: “There are a number of issues to discuss and I think energy security is arguably one of the most pressing, alongside the war in Europe, which obviously dominated their discussions.”
She also resisted talking about the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite an ongoing dispute with the EU over the mechanism aimed at preventing a hard border with the Republic - the UK’s only land boundary with the bloc.
