When Emmanuel Macron rushed to hug the new UK prime minister at their first meeting in Egypt this week, some called it a “bromance”.
Even though the French president’s hands-on embrace of world leaders is almost always called a “bromance” – from Justin Trudeau to Mohammed bin Salman and Donald Trump (a relationship which eventually soured), Macron and Rishi Sunak’s grinning and back-slapping stood out as symbolic.
There is a clear wish in Paris to thaw and reset the frosty Franco-British relationship, which had plummeted to its worst state in decades under Boris Johnson, with bitter disputes over submarine contracts, fishing rights and rows over who was to blame for the catastrophic deaths of people trying to reach the UK coast on small boats.
A French official described the potential for an upturn in relations: “We’ve clearly had our differences, we’ve each of us sometimes been held hostage to internal politics in both countries, but at the end of the day France’s strategic interests are very much aligned with the UK … The British are partners who aren’t always easy but who are absolutely vital. The quality of the exchanges in recent weeks has been positive.”
Macron and Sunak share common threads in their backgrounds and routes to politics. Both are the eldest sons of doctors – Sunak’s father was an NHS family doctor and his mother ran a pharmacy, Macron’s father was a neurologist and his mother a paediatrician.
Both leaders attended top graduate schools and worked as investment bankers, moving swiftly from the private sector to run economy ministries. While at those ministries, they each had a kind of insider-outsider status that would ultimately lead them to leapfrog their bosses. Macron grew frustrated at the limited appetite for free-market reform of his Socialist mentor, François Hollande, ultimately betraying him by breaking off and running as a maverick for president. Sunak’s resignation as chancellor was seen as a key factor in Johnson’s resignation.
They are almost the same age. Macron, who became France’s youngest modern leader aged 39, is now 44 and in his second term. Sunak, 42, went from member of parliament to prime minister in just seven years – faster than any other prime minister in the modern era.
The label of “wealthy” also hangs over them in tricky ways – Sunak has a multimillion-pound fortune with his wife, far beyond that of Macron, but the French president has been unable to shake his critics’ tag as “president of the rich” since transforming France’s wealth tax. Both have been accused of being cut off from voters’ everyday lives. They wear similar, sleek navy suits. French media call Sunak “well-dressed”, even if Le Monde deemed his suits “too tight”.
But a crucial difference is Brexit – with Sunak an unwavering supporter of leaving the EU in 2016 and Macron a staunch pro-European.
“They have been compared to each other even before Sunak became prime minister, because in both their countries they represent a kind of golden elite – good studies, an upper-middle-class success story,” said Sylvie Matelly, deputy director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs. “They were both people who weren’t predestined to become grand politicians and were closer to the business and banking world.”
Matelly felt there was a wish for “calm” in the UK-France relationship, with France seeing “no interest in isolating the UK”. But much would depend on Sunak and his stance on the Northern Ireland protocol.
The two leaders’ first meeting was far from the war of words of Johnson telling France “donnez-moi un break” and France deeming Johnson a populist, or Sunak’s short-lived predecessor Liz Truss refusing to say whether Macron was a friend or a foe while running for the Conservative leadership.
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Elvire Fabry, a senior research fellow at the Jacques Delors Institute, said: “What’s encouraging in what we’ve seen over the past few days is the general tone, there has been no provocation from either side. What strikes you between Sunak and Macron is the same will to focus on major issues and avoid peripheral conflicts.”
She said their approach to the small boats issue in the Channel suggested more pragmatism and “less of a register of mutual blame”. But the issue of the Northern Ireland protocol remained the most complex issue and “a great unknown”.
She said there were similarities “in the way they broke through in politics coming from the world of finance and the private sector”, and that they spoke “the same geo-economic language”, but they potentially shared the weakness of appearing “less anchored in sociological reality” in their countries, and having to make an extra effort to pay attention to the street and popular opinion.
Macron has invited Sunak to a Paris conference on Ukraine on 13 December. The two leaders are preparing a joint UK-France summit next year and will also be working on Iran, the energy crisis and energy supplies for winter, as well as the climate crisis and the issue of small boats in the Channel.
The French daily Libération still sees Sunak as “a resolute Thatcherite” and “partisan of Brexit and austerity” – “Truss is gone, Thatcher is staying,” the paper said.
