Remember when Boris Johnson met Emmanuel Macron for the first time as Prime Minister? It was in August and, as the Guardian made clear to its readers, it was the French president calling the shots. The newspaper illustrated its point with a photograph of the two leaders at their lecterns, the French president looking statesmanlike and the British Prime Minister with a hand clasped to his head.
Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron on the Guardian website[/caption]
How different the fortunes of the leaders are four months on. Johnson has just been returned to power with a ‘stonking’ majority, as impressive as the one Macron’s centrist LREM (La République En Marche) enjoyed in the 2017 French parliamentary elections. But there is a crucial difference: Johnson leads a united Conservative party whereas Macron’s nascent LREM was composed of men and women from the left and right, which in part explains why 11 of his 314 MPs have quit the party in the last two and a half years.
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