France rolls out the red carpet for Britain

AYEAR AGO , trust between France and Britain was in free fall. Liz Truss, British prime minister, had won office after claiming not to know whether Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was a “friend or foe”. The two countries were over fish, migrants, borders and more. So it is a mark of the cross-Channel turnaround since then that France this week rolled out the red carpet for Britain.Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, was the first beneficiary. On September 19th Mr Macron hosted him at the Elysée Palace, the day before King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived for a three-day state visit. Some in Labour circles presented Sir Keir’s meeting as a coup. In reality Mr Macron periodically receives aspirant leaders, among them Olaf Scholz in 2021 before he became Germany’s chancellor and, in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky when he was running to be Ukraine’s president.