Le bromance: have Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron really turned the page?

Anglo-French relations appear to have been revitalised after French President Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson agreed to hold a new bilateral summit “sooner rather than later”.

The two world leaders met on Sunday at this year’s G7 summit in Bavaria to discuss the war in Ukraine. But after a “fraught” meeting at the G7 in Cornwall last year, the pair’s relationship seems to have been renewed after Johnson jokingly referred to it as “le bromance” and added that they were “100% aligned” on Ukraine, reported The Times.

Sausages and submarines

Last year’s disagreements over “sausages and submarines” look to be in the past, said Reuters, after Macron and Johnson emerged “all smiles” from their bilateral talk. They avoided tricky topics such as Brexit, cross-Channel migration and the Aukus defence pact, over which they have argued in the past, and instead focused on reaching a consensus on Ukraine.

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The Times reported that “the pair agreed that the outright defeat of Russia remained the best outcome” of the war in Ukraine. The paper added that Johnson appeared “effusive after he emerged from the meeting” because “Macron’s firm line on Ukraine exceeded British expectations”.

Both Macron and Johnson have spoken little since they clashed in Cornwall last year over Johnson’s demands for new rules to import cold meat into Northern Ireland, a quarrel dubbed the “sausage wars”. And in September there were further clashes over a trilateral deal agreed between the US, UK and Australia, which led to Australia cancelling a £27bn submarine deal with a French company in favour of using US-UK technology instead.

Surge in military support needed

Johnson hopes to use the summit to urge allies not to pressure Ukraine into settling the conflict, fearing that it would only cause “enduring instability” and embolden China and other authoritarian regimes. He warned against giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a “licence to manipulate” his neighbours.

During the bilateral talks, Johnson and Macron agreed that the West needed to provide a “surge” in military support for Ukraine to ensure it had access to enough ammunition to expel Russia. They borrowed the term “surge” from American general David Petraeus, “who used an influx of arms and troops in Iraq in 2007 in an attempt to break the deadlock there”, explained The Times.

The pair also discussed the concept of a European political community, said Politico, a pet idea of Macron’s that would essentially mean the formation of a new structure made up of countries seeking EU membership or closer co-operation with the bloc. French officials claimed that Johnson had shown “a lot of enthusiasm” for the idea, which was later “rubbished” by UK sources, reported the news site.

The Telegraph’s political correspondent Tony Diver reported that the sources described Johnson’s reaction to the idea as “not a meaningful endorsement” and “more like a deflection”.

Nevertheless, it seems that the previously cooling French-British relationship is warming up again, after both parties expressed a desire to meet again “sooner rather than later”. It is thought the talks will be modelled on the 2010 Lancaster House defence and security treaties, signed by the then prime minister David Cameron and French president Nicolas Sarkozy.