Macron–Starmer: The Alliance of the Blind Man and the Paralyzed

For last week’s state visit of the French President, King Charles III spared no royal splendor: forty‑one gun salutes, dozens of mounted Horse Guards, three royal carriages, antique landaus over a century old brought back for the occasion, and a grand Windsor banquet laid for 160 guests.

Guaranteed success: Brigitte was reportedly “enchanted,” and the President himself appeared on cloud nine — hardly indifferent to honors of that magnitude.

Symbolism matters in foreign policy—think of the famed “Entente Cordiale”—but it remains uncertain whether such somewhat nostalgic pageantry can mask the worrisome decline faced by these two former great powers of continental Europe. Both economies are faltering, defense budgets are severely underfunded, and both head of state in France and prime minister in the U.K.—Macron and Starmer—are languishing at rock-bottom in the polls.

So much so that this state visit irresistibly recalls Jean‑Pierre Claris de Florian’s fable The Blind Man and the Lame Man (1792):
“I bear my sufferings, and you bear yours. Let us unite them, my brother, and they will be less dreadful…”

It’s a familiar tale between London and Paris.
King Louis‑Philippe, to whom Emmanuel Macron bears a striking resemblance, sought from 1834 to seal Franco‑British reconciliation in the face of rising absolutist powers (Prussia, Austria, Russia). His doctrine—“order at home, peace abroad”—achieved neither, much like his distant successor today.

Two decades later, in 1855, Napoleon III and Queen Victoria exchanged lavish visits between London and Paris, while their allied armies fought the Russians in… Crimea—some 240,000 dead—to defend the Sublime Porte. Two centuries on, with Crimea again under a tsar’s sway, Macron and Starmer present themselves as spearheading the “volunteer coalition” to defend Ukraine. At Westminster, Macron exhorted British parliamentarians to keep up the fight:

“Europeans will never abandon Ukraine… The U.K. and France must once again show the world that their alliance can make all the difference.”

But with what resources, when both armies are skeletal, and Trump only contemplates withdrawing from “Biden’s war”?

At the outset of the last century, in April 1904, the so-called “Entente Cordiale” treaties were signed. Despite the Fashoda crisis, they divided colonial spheres of influence: Egypt for London, Morocco for Paris, Siam or Madagascar—and laid groundwork for the Triple Entente with Russia, against Germany and Austria‑Hungary.

A sign of the times: today we no longer divide colonies, but instead contend with migrants from those former colonies, tens of thousands crossing the Channel toward Britain. And here we are, French authorities acting as gatekeepers, funded by London to do so. London demands tougher enforcement from our gendarmes and proposes a “one‑for‑one” deal: one returned migrant for one who reaches British shores.

A strange era indeed…

Fortunately, there remains nuclear deterrence. Since the 1995 Chequers Declaration, Paris and London have sought to align their doctrines toward the rest of Europe:
“No situation in which the vital interests of either nation… might be threatened without concurrently threatening those of the other,” declared Jacques Chirac and John Major.

Thirty years later, Macron and Starmer echo that exact phrasing:
“No extreme threat to Europe’s security should go unanswered by both countries.”

Whether this faith will reassure the rest of Europe—especially as Trump threatens to withdraw his nuclear guarantee—remains to be seen. And most importantly, how would it be executed? For nuclear launch decisions are not shared…

Macron dreams of “protecting our continental European allies through our deterrent.”

Starmer, meanwhile, has just ordered a dozen U.S. F‑35 aircraft to carry British nuclear weapons—which inevitably remain under Pentagon control…

Unable to truly rearm—unlike Germany, which has just made that choice—Paris and London linger in rhetoric. As the fable advises: “Let us help one another, and the burden of suffering will be lighter.”

Pierre Lellouche – July 10, 2025