French president Emmanuel Macron has phoned Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his appointment as prime minister. Macron’s Twitter account records that he was ‘pleased with our first discussion’, adding: ‘We will continue the work begun with the UK for our bilateral cooperation, for peace and security in Europe, for the climate and for AI.’ But the British Prime Minister should beware Macron bearing gifts.

As is the custom, the British prime minister will have received similar calls from a host of foreign heads of state and government. But Emmanuel Macron is different. The European and French general elections have taken a serious toll of his reputation domestically and internationally. Sunday’s second round voting is now unlikely to give Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National an outright majority. Nor will it for any of the three parliamentary blocs. In this most hung of parliaments, the president will stretch every sinew to assemble a fragile, baroque ‘rainbow’ coalition, that excludes the RN, to carry on governing. Given the opprobrium with which he is held domestically, not least among erstwhile Macronists, his profile will perforce be very low. That........

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