Denis MacShane / Jul 2025
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer have more in common than any two previous leaders of France and Britain in history. They arrived at the top of government with very little electoral or political experience. Macron’s first election was in 2017 when he became president. Starmer’s first election was when he inherited a safe labour seat in North London.
He had a second walkover election a year ago after the fastest collapse of a major party, the Conservatives, in European political history. Today both men are very low in the polls. Both men have no real control over their parliament. Macron called an unnecessary early election for the National Assembly in Paris, which saw Marion Le Pen emerge as leader of the biggest party.
Since then all lawmaking in France has been blocked including major reforms of the welfare state. Starmer has an enormous majority but his attempts at reforming Britain’s welfare state which is now one of the most expensive in Europe collapsed in division and derision as Parliament refused to obey his orders .
Both men have problems with migration and the arrival of new citizens with a very different outlook of politics from the long established British and French ideas of liberties including rights of journalists, women and gays.
Neither knows how to handle Putin or Trump or indeed Xi, the looming new master of the world from China. Both men face challenges from the new ethnonationalist and racist politics of 21st century populism. Macron has made the first state visit to Britain by a French president in 17 years and arriving ahead of President Trump who will decide how to react to this Anglo-French snub.
Starmer hopes to get help from Macron in dealing with the influx of asylum seekers and economic migrants arriving in small boats from the beaches that evacuated 340,000 British French and other European soldiers in June 1940. There is every reason for Macron to cooperate and show that the French police can control their coasts instead of handing them over to criminal gangs.
Equally it would be no bad thing if Starmer could allow British musicians and artists to rejoin the circuit of French summer cultural festivals or allow youngsters again to study or do gap year work in France to improve their French as his predecessor Tony Blair did as a young man.
Two years ago Macron proposed that European troops should be deployed to Ukraine. At the time Britain was under the rule of Europhobe ministers who couldn’t make up their mind if Macron was “friend or foe”. The London defence establishment rubbished Macron’s idea but Starmer has re-badged it as a “coalition of the willing”. The two men have brought together a powerful alliance in Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere around the world to make clear to Putin that his imperialist aggression should not succeed.
The question remains whether this new entente cordiale will make either leader more secure in the governance of his country or provide answers to the problems both nations face.
Denis MacShane is the former Minister of Europe and author of the first English biography of France’s president François Mitterrand.
