Emmanuel Macron’s lightning visit to the White House was a tour de force of French diplomatic energy, skill and bravado. Whether Macron has managed to convince Donald Trump of the need to involve Kyiv and Europe in US-Russian negotiations on the war in Ukraine will become clear in the next fortnight. But what it demonstrated forcefully was the striking humiliation of the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the slothful incompetence of diplomacy in London and Washington. It is a stark warning of how President Macron and the EU will run rings round the Labour government and its ‘reset’ with Brussels.
The Labour government announced some two weeks ago a Keir Starmer visit to Washington to meet newly elected Donald Trump. No precise date was given, but Sir Keir was expected to be one of the first world, and first European, leaders to visit the White House in ‘special relationship’ tradition. By contrast, Emmanuel Macron had no trip to Washington planned.
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