Can Sunak and Macron reset UK-France relations?

If every picture tells a story, then images from the Cop27 conference, of a British prime minister and a French president getting along quite well, deserve a chapter of their own.

Rishi Sunak, proudly the first person of Asian origin to rise to Britain’s highest political office, is showing even those opposed to his views that he can be a statesman of dignity.

While he has already made some mistakes in a premiership only a few weeks old, it is to his credit that courtesy and professionalism seem to come naturally. And that extends to his early dealings with potentially troublesome figures.

Sunak’s predecessors made a viable working relationship between France and the UK nigh on impossible. A series of eminently avoidable disputes might almost have been concocted to appease nationalistic elements of the ruling Conservative party.

But the warm hug and back-slapping between prime minister and president at the Sharm El Sheikh climate change summit offered modest hope that the entente cordiale, signed in 1904 to improve cross-Channel relations, might be back in safe hands.

Grown-up observers note the contrast with Boris Johnson, whose approach to France veered between gauche chumminess and blustering belligerence, complete with schoolboyish “donnez-moi un break” jokes. Sunak is also unlikely to be caught declaring, as Liz Truss did when campaigning to succeed Johnson, that the “jury’s out” on whether Macron is friend or foe.

As happens rather a lot in Truss’s political life, she had radical second thoughts, insisting after becoming prime minister that he was a friend after all. That she had considered it tactically useful to doubt Macron’s intentions gives a telling insight into modern Conservatism’s French-bashing instincts. Cursory scrutiny of Anglo-French history reveals ample evidence of wholly uncordial sentiment. Periodic warfare can be traced back to the 12th century; the so-called 100 Years’ War in fact lasted for 116, between 1337 and 1453.

Allies in both the 1914-18 and 1939-45 world wars, and in other important international crises, the two nations have nevertheless managed to find endless grounds for bitter discord. Brexit has generated a new breed of contentious issues, including fishing rights, immigration, Channel transport and the Northern Ireland border; there has been non-Brexit friction over Covid-19 controls and a submarine deal with Australia. Their legacy complicates Sunak’s search for more constructive ties.

The two leaders do have plenty in common. Both are meritocrats. Three of their parents were doctors ( Sunak’s mother was a pharmacist). Roughly the same age – Sunak, 42, Macron two years older – they worked successfully in investment banking before turning to politics. The photos from Cop27 suggest the same sleek dress sense. And despite Macron’s spell as economics minister in the failed socialist government of Francois Hollande, and his later attachment to centrism, his developing philosophy broadly resembles the moderate right-wing approach of Sunak.

Where, glaringly, they disagree is on Europe. Macron is passionately pro-EU whereas Sunak equally firmly supported Britain’s withdrawal. In the face of powerful evidence that Brexit is economically as well as socially damaging, he still talks of “embracing its opportunities”.

Sunak cannot be unaware of the undercurrent of kneejerk Francophobia that flows through his party from grass roots to parliament. There have been post-Brexit faults on both sides but populist British antagonism towards France defines much of the discontent.

The National