It’s extremely difficult to imagine that today’s meeting between Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron produced anything substantive beyond a photo opportunity at the Arc de Triomphe to mark the 106th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.
This year is also the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale and it suits both Starmer and Macron to big up the idea of Franco-British friendship, not that there has been much substance to it of late.
Various bromides will certainly appear in the read-outs of the meeting but in substance nothing will have been achieved
Downing Street briefed before today’s meeting that the agenda would cover the victory of Trump, and his threatened tariffs, and the war in Ukraine, and the president-elect’s threatened refusal to keep writing cheques for it. The leaders were also to discuss pressuring lame-duck president Biden to permit the use by Ukraine of Storm Shadow missiles against targets in Russia. In the end, the pair pledged to put Ukraine in the ‘strongest possible position’ before the winter.
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