The irony of Starmer’s Armistice Day visit to France

Yesterday morning, the British Prime Minister travelled to Paris at the invitation of the French President to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. Sir Keir Starmer was the first UK leader to attend an Armistice Day ceremony in Paris since Winston Churchill did so alongside General de Gaulle in 1944.

Yet there is a degree of irony in these displays of Franco-British unity marking the war’s end. Despite having fought side-by-side for the conflict’s duration, and notwithstanding the integration of their economies to an unprecedented degree, at the war’s end the two countries reverted to traditional rivalry. One of the areas where friction manifested itself was over how to deal with post-war Germany, which unfortunately coincided with France becoming the scapegoat in the war guilt debate.

In the wake of the Versailles Treaty, by fair means and foul, Berlin successfully contested the legitimacy of Article 231, which laid responsibility for the war’s outbreak with Germany and the central powers.