Violation of protocol
In a potential breach of diplomatic protocol, Macron was the first world leader to call Starmer to congratulate him as the British election results were known – before he was even officially appointed prime minister. The two spoke again the following day, once the British leader entered Downing Street.
Their first bilateral meeting after the election took place at the NATO summit in Washington the following week, during which Macron shared a photo of the two men embracing. And the evening after the summit at Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill’s birthplace, the two men spoke one-on-one again before sitting down to a fancy dinner together in a lavish setting.
The chemistry between the two men seemed warm as they strolled through Blenheim’s flower-filled terraces, out of camera range. Both smiled, while Macron occasionally gestured to punctuate his remarks. For a few minutes, the two men sat on a stone bench, talking privately.
At a late afternoon press conference, Macron told POLITICO that his new counterpart had ushered in a “new momentum for your political life and your domestic policy.” The sentiment echoes the insurgent political movement Macron has built in 2022: “Workingnow renamed “Renaissance.”
British officials at Blenheim said the summit was shared between Starmer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Macron may have wondered whether he could pass on the centrist torch to power in Europe.
“Macron must look at Starmer and ask what might have been,” said Anand Menon, director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe. “Out of nowhere, the British, long regarded by the European elite as basket cases, have emerged as the putative leaders of the continent’s centrist tendencies.”
