King Charles, Sunak and Macron – could this be the start of a new entente cordiale?

Blaming France has been the all-too predictable response when UK governments find themselves in trouble. And successive prime ministers have found ample opportunities to reach for this trusty tool in recent years.

From the long, drawn-out Brexit negotiations, where the EU’s chief negotiator was a Frenchman; to the difficulties the eventual agreement presented to parliament; to the arguments about small boats crossing the Channel; to differences about how to treat Russia after it invaded Ukraine – and quite a lot more.

For all that, it should still be astonishing that the UK-France summit announced this week – to be held in March – will be the first formal meeting between the two countries’ leaders for more than five years.

The last was in January 2018, when Theresa May hosted Emmanuel Macron at Sandhurst – a venue that may say quite a lot about its intended focus. There have been bilateral encounters on the sidelines of other gatherings – the most recent being Liz Truss’s make-up-and-mend meeting with Macron during a European leaders’ pow-wow in Prague last October, just weeks after she had notoriously declined to commit herself as to whether France was a “friend” or “foe”.

There are reasons, of course, why it has taken so long, chief among them the on-off travel restrictions during the Covid pandemic, with the ructions in and around Downing Street coming a close second. Whether Macron’s undisguised misgivings about Boris Johnson’s suitability to be leader – he called him a “clown” – played a part may not be known. But the sad truth, and it is a sad truth, is that two neighbours with many common interests and a great deal to talk about have not met at summit level for five years. And that omission says as much about the state of relations as does the apparent enthusiasm on the UK side to open a new chapter now.

Further evidence of that enthusiasm came with the disclosure, on the eve of the summit announcement, that Paris would host the King’s first state visit at the end of March. President Macron was known to have extended the invitation at the time of the Queen’s funeral, but the King’s early acceptance of this particular invitation over others he must have received – an acceptance that would have been given the green light by Downing Street – suggests that setting relations with France on a new footing has become a major, even urgent, priority of this UK government.

Nor is it hard to understand why. Improved relations with France can be seen as key to improving relations with the European Union more broadly and reducing, if not actually solving, a lot of other problems. France is where many of the UK’s current concerns converge, in practical as in political terms. However much non-EU Britain might aspire to a global role, it makes sense for this country’s post-Brexit diplomacy to start with some fence-mending closer to home.

The proposal for a summit was agreed in principle when Liz Truss met Macron in Prague, but it was renewed when Rishi Sunak and Macron first spoke soon after Sunak became prime minister. Its remit, at least on the British side, also seems to have broadened beyond the good old standby for UK-France summits of defence.

That the agenda, as outlined by both sides, now encompasses a lot else, including “cooperation in a huge range of areas including security, climate and energy, the economy, migration and shared foreign policy goals”, suggests that the ambitions for this summit are far higher than they were when it was first proposed – amounting to something akin to a whole reset of UK-France relations.

It can be taken for granted that the small boat Channel crossings will loom large under the heading of migration, not only because they feature as one of the prime minister’s five priorities, but because any success the UK’s legislative efforts might eventually have would work in French interests, too, if they started to shrink the coastal encampments and even the number of people trying to cross illegally into France.

However much money is thrown at it, policing the long coastline alone is not going to work. Energy could be a fruitful area for increased cooperation, with France and the UK building on complementary strengths and proximity being a distinct asset. France was spared the greatest shocks from the EU’s turn away from Russian gas because of its reliance on nuclear power; its expertise in this field is already starting to fill the gap left when the UK called off its joint projects with China. The UK, for its part, might have something to offer in the development of renewables. Defence and security have been a pillar of UK-French relations since the St Malo Declaration of 1998.

Agreed between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, this might be seen as a high point of cross-Channel cooperation and proof that there really can be a meeting of British and French minds. Making common cause on defence has, however, has been easier in words than in deeds. From the start of his presidency, Macron championed the concept of an independent EU defence capability – independent, that is, of Nato – which was a sharp dividing line with the UK, even before Brexit. The war in Ukraine has sidelined any EU ambitions for “strategic autonomy”, at least for the time being.

But despite shows of unity in and around Nato and vocal expressions of support for Ukraine, the UK and France have often been far apart in terms of what military help they are prepared to give and how far to maintain contact with Moscow. While there has been some narrowing of the gap as the war has ground on, the divisions could well widen again – if and when an endgame comes into view. The same rift, though, applies within the European Union, which might frustrate the UK’s ambitions, if it sees better relations with France as a stepping-stone towards improved relations with the EU.

If the UK is to overcome the bitter taste left by Brexit in Brussels and beyond, it will probably take more than a rapprochement with France, although that could be a beginning. It should also be said that the very announcement of a summit, and one with a wide-ranging agenda, marks a significant advance – if only because summits, once announced, are not set up to fail. I can recall only two serious failures in recent memory: Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik over nuclear weapons reductions in 1986, and Trump and Putin at Helsinki in 2018, because Trump lost the support of his own side.

Whether it makes sense to have two such high-profile UK-France diplomatic events – the summit and the King’s state visit – barely three weeks apart is a question that might raise some British or Gallic eyebrows. But any concerns on this front were neatly swept away by a French official who described the summit as serving as an “ice-breaker” ahead of the state visit. It has to be hoped that it is not the King who finds himself called upon to break any newly frozen ice.

But the odds on failure are vanishingly small. Summits are scripted and staged down to the last letter and gesture. As for personality, Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron could be seen in many ways as natural allies, with a common professional background and technocratic approach. It could be easier for them to find common ground than for any British and French leaders since – well, since Blair and Chirac. It is a comparison, though, which holds its own warning.

Within five years, that promising entente had been completely destroyed by the war in Iraq, which brought UK-French relations to perhaps their lowest point in living memory. In the end, personal judgements and perceived national interests prevail, and the glow of a successful summit, however desired, may last only so long.