Macron’s Brexit swansong is about to unfold

At a solemn ceremony at the Panthéon to mark the 150th anniversary of the (re-)birth of the Republic, president Macron chose a 59-year-old anti-Brexit British expatriate to be one of five newly naturalised French citizens emblematic of what it means to become French. Macron does nothing without gauging its historical and political theatre. Coming just days before the eighth and final round of Brexit negotiations, here was Macron thumbing his nose at Britain and signalling his intention to return to the Brexit arena. What will this mean for the Brexit negotiations?

First it will see Michel Barnier increasingly sidelined. Barnier is, after all, a mere EU functionary whose brief was drafted before Covid and which he has very legalistically stuck to. Unsurprisingly, when Barnier was asked this week on French radio about this prospect he gave the functionary’s stock response: ‘I negotiate in the name of the 27 heads of state and government, who have confidence in me.