In March 2023 a literal stink prevented a royal visit across the Channel. French rubbish collectors had gone on strike, and King Charles’s trip had to be postponed due to garbage fires. The visit did happen, in September of that year, but the vibes were off.
Today the mood is better. French president Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to the UK this week—from 8th to 10th July— illustrates just how far Franco-British relations have come since then. This will be Macron’s first official trip to the country, and the first by any French president since 2008.
In the first years after Brexit, with the Queen’s declining health, such a visit seemed wishful thinking. But the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s chaotic second term have changed the calculus on this side of the Atlantic, leading to a thaw between the two countries. “Macron and Starmer have been thrown together,” Adam Sage, Times Radio’s correspondent in Paris, tells me, “they are clutching each other’s arms and shoulders for mutual support.”
The rapprochement dates back to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which forced Paris and London into unexpected European leadership roles, says Georgina Wright, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “There was a need for France and the UK, as the two largest military and nuclear powers in Europe, to step up, and they’ve done that,” she says.
But the path towards friendly ties has not been smooth. The implementation of Brexit in 2020 marked a low point in the bilateral relationship. Despite initial warmth towards Boris Johnson after he came to power in 2019, Macron was particularly tough on the UK during Brexit negotiations, Tristan de Bourbon-Parme, a French journalist based in London, explains. In response, in 2021 the UK sent the Royal Navy to chase French fishing boats out of British waters, and dropped a French arms company from a submarine deal involving Australia and the United States.
This deterioration accelerated in the lead-up to the 2022 French presidential elections. Macron was running for a second term. “As long as it could further his cause, Macron was prepared to bash the British,” says De Bourbon-Parme.
Macron’s victory that year over far-right leader Marine Le Pen, as well as the departures of Johnson and then Liz Truss from 10 Downing Street, also paved the way for warmer ties. In March 2023, Macron and Rishi Sunak—who shared a background in investment banking—organised a summit aimed at beginning a “new chapter” in bilateral relations.
Still, Russia’s belligerence and US threats to end military support for Ukraine have been the greater factors. “The effect of Trump has been to galvanise the whole of Europe into thinking more about security and defence, spending more, and in that, UK-French leadership feels pretty natural,” says the crossbench peer Peter Ricketts, who was UK ambassador to France from 2012 to 2016.
Because the UK is no longer part of the European Union, Keir Starmer is in a unique position among Europe’s leaders—able to play both sides when it comes to Trump and the US. And in Macron, who in consecutive elections has positioned himself as a pro-European rampart against the rise of the populist far right, the UK prime minister seems to have found a fitting ally.
Last week, Starmer published a readout of a call he had with Macron ahead of the visit. At a UK-France summit this Thursday, the two leaders hope “to make good progress across a wide range of our joint priorities including migration, growth, defence and security”. Policy to stop small-boat crossings across the Channel is expected to be part of the discussions. Over the weekend, the home secretary Yvette Cooper praised “important new tactics” brought in by France “to stop boats that are in the water” (in one recent incident in northern France, police used knives to pierce the sides of a vessel).
But whatever the outcome, the summit might help shore up Macron’s legacy on the national stage. At home, the French president is grappling with the fallout from an unpopular pension reform. In catastrophic snap elections in June last year, his party came second to a left-wing coalition, further damaging Macron's legitimacy in the eyes of the French people.
Macron’s spearheading, alongside Starmer, of a European “coalition of the willing” in the war in Ukraine, as well as his public jabs at Trump (for example, correcting him at a press conference) have earned the French leader international accolades. At home, the lame duck president's ratings have improved: between February and March, his ratings benefited from a “Trump bump” of 7 per cent in just one month, and now sit at 29 per cent, almost double what they were when Trump was elected six months ago.
And as EU cooperation again feels more urgent amid continued Russian aggression in Ukraine, Macron has positioned himself at the blue and gold centre of it. “In many ways, the EU has never felt so French,” says Wright.
Whether the better vibes continue is another question. As France heads towards volatile 2027 presidential elections and a post-Macron era (thanks to the country’s two-term limit)—and with Marine Le Pen potentially in the running for the presidency—there’s no telling how long the new entente between Britain and France will last.
