Look, I know it’s a bit embarrassing, but it made me quite emotional. I have no great love for Keir Starmer, and I just about tolerate Emmanuel Macron at the best of times, but there was something about seeing the two of them together, presenting a united front. The United States went mad and it looked, briefly, like Ukraine would be standing alone against Russia. How could it possibly hope to win?
Quickly, though, France and Britain joined forces and decided to work on a peace plan together, and made it clear to Volodymyr Zelensky that Europe was still standing by him. Other countries joined in, of course – Germany’s Friedrich Merz should be applauded for his spine – but Starmer and Macron were at the forefront of it all.
The UK may no longer be in the European Union, but the prime minister still did his best to corral heads of state, and try to get them to discuss what should happen next. Macron, meanwhile, confirmed that his country’s nuclear umbrella could extend to other parts of the continent. Though both imperfect leaders at home, the two of them stepped up on the world stage when it mattered. They are, a Downing Street source told the press, “working hand in glove”.
What a heartwarming sight! What a relief! I discussed it with my grandmother recently and she, inveterate anglophile that she is, told me that I’d been silly for ever worrying. Of course, France and Britain were always going to get along again. Heaven knows we’ve had our troubles in the past – that’s probably an understatement – but we’ve always ended up getting close again and working together when needed.
I applauded her optimism, but had to confess that my faith hadn’t always been as strong as hers. After all, I had to live through the Brexit and Boris years on this side of the Channel, and I can still remember the constant sense of burning shame. Macron and Johnson loathed each other, and Tory PM after Tory PM lined up to deliver cheap shots at their Gallic neighbours, in the hope of, I guess, impressing old-school xenophobes and newspapers baying for blood.
I hated it. I hated those years! I’m a child of divorce as it is, and didn’t need two of my countries to start bitterly quarrelling on top of everything else. I guess I knew, intellectually, that things would get better eventually, but I suppose I had to see it to believe it. That it’s now happening and I get to witness it with my own eyes is more reassuring than words can say. It also feels symptomatic of something broader, and more personal.
Last week, on Tuesday, I went to watch The Years at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s an adaptation of an Annie Ernaux book, in which she chronicles the lives of French women from, roughly, the end of the second world war until the beginning of the new millennium, like a collective autobiography. It’s a literary tour de force, and I had no idea what to expect from seeing it on stage.
In the end, I needn’t have worried: it was phenomenal. I laughed, I cried, and so did the rest of the audience. What I did feel, which others perhaps didn’t, however, was an odd sense of warmth and contentment. Here I was, in a theatre, surrounded by British people, and what we were watching was a play about the lives of women like my grandmother. We listened to French songs other audience members probably hadn’t heard before, but which I knew by heart.
I burst out laughing at the scene involving Jacques Chirac, but I was the only one. I guess you had to be there at the time to find it funny. I watched this play for two hours, about the women I knew and grew up with, and it just made me so happy to know I was doing it alongside British women, who’d come to learn about the lives of their French counterparts. I love the fact that the play has been so successful, despite being adapted from such a deeply French book.
Two nights later, I went to watch the rock band La Femme at the Roundhouse in north London, and a similar thing happened. As we walked to the venue, my friend and I joked that we were about to spend an evening with every single other French millennial currently residing in the capital. La Femme, though very famous among our people, remain fairly unknown in Britain. As it turns out, we were wrong; though we did hear some French in the audience, most people there seemed to be Brits.
Again: what a joy! It may well have been a coincidence, but watching our two leaders get along while, in the same week, spending so much time in these culturally hybrid spaces filled my heart with glee and pride. The entente cordiale was never dead, but it did limp on gingerly for some years; what a delight to see it thrive again. Long may it continue.
