Why Macron wanted to be the first European to visit Trump

Emmanuel Macron’s lightning visit to the White House was a tour de force of French diplomatic energy, skill and bravado. Whether Macron has managed to convince Donald Trump of the need to involve Kyiv and Europe in US-Russian negotiations on the war in Ukraine will become clear in the next two weeks. But what it demonstrated forcefully was the striking humiliation of the British prime minister Keir Starmer and the slothful incompetence of diplomacy in London and Washington. It is a stark warning of how President Macron and the EU will run rings round the Labour government and its “reset” with Brussels.

The Labour government announced some two weeks ago a Keir Starmer visit to Washington to meet newly elected Donald Trump. No precise date was given, but Sir Keir was expected to be one of the first world, and first European, leaders to visit the White House in “special relationship” tradition. By contrast, Emmanuel Macron had no trip to Washington planned. As a lame-duck president, desperately unpopular at home and with a tarnished international image, such a visit was improbable. As an acerbic commentator mischievously pointed out, Trump only had to whisper to Macron: “I hear you had another Islamic terrorist attack this week” or: “Which number government are you on today?” or: “How are things going with Algeria?”

But Trump’s surprise direct negotiations with Putin earlier this month on the Ukraine war presented Macron with a golden opportunity to get back in the game. As soon as Macron learnt of Europe’s sidelining, the Élysée and the French diplomatic service went into overdrive to ensure Macron appeared as Europe’s leader by being first to meet Donald Trump to put forward Ukraine and Europe’s interests. This boost was required for domestic popularity and to restore Macron’s EU leadership credentials before Germany emerged from its torpor. The first casualty was Starmer and his Labour-billed putative role as leader of Europe.

Paris and London had been in close communication since Trump’s overtures to Putin in keeping with the 2010 Lancaster House Treaties. Little matter that their respective defense chiefs were in detailed discussions on a Franco-British military peacekeeping force and security guarantees to Ukraine. Macron and France’s needs were greater. According to Le Monde’s Philippe Ricard, French insistence on a visit provoked US national security advisor, Mike Waltz, last week to suggest a joint Macron-Starmer meeting. But Macron would have none of it. The impeccably well-informed French daily cited a reliable source: “Macron wanted to be first and alone on the photo.” So much for displaying European unity to Donald Trump.

Macron got his meeting on the Monday three days ahead of Starmer. Élysée and Quai d’Orsay then moved up another gear to seal a Trump-Macron press conference topped with a meeting with US senators and a Macron interview on Fox News. In that diplomatic blitz, France’s institutions did their president proud. We will see how effective in presenting Britain as a global player the foreign office has been on Thursday. British leaders will already have expended much diplomatic capital with Team Trump in attempting to excuse Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Peter Mandelson’s old puerile anti-Trump social media invective.

Among those watching closely will be Brussels negotiators scrutinizing the diplomatic impact of the prime ministerial team. There will be no hiding behind Lammy’s self-proclaimed “progressive realism,” nor Starmer’s human rights-based internationalism. Kemi Badenoch’s speech today captured the international zeitgeist when she criticized those who play “by the most gentle of Queensbury rules” while others break all the rules. We are back to nineteenth century international great power politics, where Trump-style nationalism and transactionalism are the flavor of the day. Macron’s eclipsing of Starmer at the court of King Donald is a taste of the true “reset” Labour should be attending to.