Boris Johnson literally swam against the tide at the G7 summit in France as he prepared for a day of global politicking with an early morning dip off Biarritz beach.
Just after 7am on Sunday, the Brexit-loving prime minister donned his bathing shorts, crossed the Allee Winston Churchill and waded out into the Atlantic.
Perhaps taking a lead from his wartime predecessor’s fondness for the saltwater, Johnson then proceeded to swim out to the Roche Ronde and back – a distance of more than 450 metres.
This being a G7 summit armed to the teeth with heavy security, he was not exactly alone.
French police frogmen watched from nearby power boats, while one officer on a paddleboard kept an eye on the slightly eccentric vision of a world leader crawling through the waves.
Johnson had been accompanied on his dip by the UK’s ambassador to Paris, but No.10 insiders confided to HuffPost UK that Ed Llewellyn had resisted the temptation to go all the way out to the rocks and back.
As a former chief of staff to David Cameron, Llewellyn is used to Eton-educated Tory premiers with a penchant for wild swimming.
Cameron took to the waters of Lough Erne during the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in 2014, saying: “It certainly wakes you up.”
That swim was described as “brisk and cold”, but fortunately for Johnson the sea temperature in Biarritz was a positively balmy 21C as the August sun beat down.
The PM joked about his early morning exercise to Donald Trump at the summit, kicking off his breakfast meeting with the president with praise for president Emmanuel Macron’s “special detachments of swimming police”.
And he couldn’t resist a Brexit link when interviewed by British TV crew later: “Let me give you a metaphor. I swam round that rock this morning.
“From here you cannot tell there is a gigantic hole in that rock. There is a way through. My point to the EU is that there is a way through, but you can’t find the way through if you just sit on the beach.”
He won’t fight Brussels on the beaches, but Johnson will never surrender the chance to prove he’s an alpha male with stamina for the choppy waters ahead. The only surprise is that he didn’t have a photographer on hand.