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Britain and France are so close that there’s a saying in Wimereux, a seafront resort on the north French coast, that if you can see England it’s going to rain, and if you can’t, it’s because it’s already raining.
Despite – or perhaps because of – that geographical proximity, Europe’s two nuclear powers have historically been adversaries as often as friends, and frequently a bit of both. While France lacks a feral press to sustain public contempt for the tribal enemy with the unique talent of the British tabloids, that enduring love-hate relationship is the indelible backdrop to this week’s state visit to the UK by President Emmanuel Macron. Even if solidarity and fortitude in the face of Russian aggression and American unreliability is the flavour of the week, the relationship remains an enduring mix of friendship, rivalry, mutual admiration and suspicion.
Tellingly, this is the first state visit by a European leader in the nine years since the British people, in their infinite wisdom, voted to leave the European Union. Keir Starmer’s cautious effort to repair some of the economic and political damage from that act of self-harm has faced French obstruction on any matter related to closer economic ties, including the totemic issue of fishing rights. As long as Starmer sticks to his red lines of no return to the EU’s single market or customs union, and no free movement of people between the continent and Britain, he will face dogged resistance from Paris against any attempt to soften the consequences of Brexit.
Both leaders have domestic problems. Macron is a lame duck who cannot seek re-election in 2027 and does not have a parliamentary majority. He regained the power to dissolve the National Assembly this week, but to do so again after last year’s fiasco would be a recidivistic suicide. Starmer has only been in office a year and enjoys a giant majority. But he failed last week to force through welfare reforms after a revolt in his Labour party, leaving him with a budget hole and an authority crisis. Both men are constrained by the rise of far-right populist parties that are exploiting public discontent over immigration and identity issues.
All the warmth of a royal welcome at Windsor Castle, a horse-drawn carriage parade and a stroll through the restored nature reserve in Windsor Great Park will not move the French president to ease his opposition to any EU special treatment for the UK, despite its strategic importance to Europe in this new age of geopolitical turbulence.
In French minds, this is about defending the club that the UK quit, preserving the EU and its prized single market from unravelling and – though Macron would not say this publicly – ensuring that the UK’s gamble on prospering outside the union is not successful. It is important to be able to point to British economic losses “pour encourager les autres”, as Voltaire might have said.
There will be lots of togetherness on defence at Thursday’s political summit, and plenty of talk in Macron’s ceremonial address to parliament of the two countries standing together to uphold a rules-based international order (are you listening, Donald?), to support Ukraine (are you listening, Vladimir and Donald?) and to strengthen Europe’s defences within Nato (ditto). The UK and France have Europe’s most robust armies and strategic cultures, yet both are so hemmed in by debt and welfare costs that they will struggle to meet the Nato pledge they agreed last month to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035, of which 3.5% will be devoted to core military outlays.
Starmer and Macron will jointly chair a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” created to give security guarantees to Ukraine, held symbolically at Nato’s maritime headquarters in Northwood, outside London. It sends a message of European determination to stand by Ukraine at a time when the US is winding down military support as Russia steps up its war of aggression.
US disengagement from European security will be a crucial, if largely unspoken sub-theme to the Franco-British rapprochement on strategic affairs. It’s worth paying particularly close attention to what both leaders say about the scope of their nuclear deterrence and the degree to which they consider their vital interests to extend beyond national borders to the rest of Europe.
Nuclear doctrine moves by millimetres. Given increasing uncertainty over the reliability of the US nuclear guarantee for Europe in the Trump era, it will be interesting to see whether Starmer and Macron go beyond what a previous generation of British and French leaders declared in 1995, when the then prime minister John Major said: “The president [Jacques Chirac] and I have concluded that the vital interests of one could not be threatened without the vital interests of the other equally being at risk.”
Successive French leaders, while maintaining a degree of strategic ambiguity, have cautiously extended that nuclear doctrine to make clear that France’s vital interests reach beyond its borders and “have a European dimension”. In the light of Trump’s equivocation, Macron recently proposed a strategic dialogue with willing European partners on this issue.
Ideally, Starmer and Macron would develop the Major-Chirac formula to include an explicit mention of the vital interests of European allies. More likely, they might jointly offer consultations with European partners on nuclear deterrence. That would be another step towards a European defence identity within Nato.
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Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
