A YEAR AGO, trust between France and Britain was in freefall. Liz Truss, a short-term British prime minister, had won office after claiming not to know whether Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was a “friend or foe”. The two countries were at odds over fish, migrants, borders and more. So it is a mark of the cross-channel turnaround since then that France this week is rolling out the red carpet for Britain.

Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, will be the week’s first beneficiary. On September 19th Mr Macron will host him at the Elysée Palace, the day before King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Paris for a three-day state visit. Some in Labour circles are presenting Sir Keir’s meeting as a coup. In reality it is not unusual for the French president to receive opposition leaders, just as Theresa May saw Mr Macron at Downing Street in 2017 when he was running for the presidency. In Paris Mr Macron hosted Olaf Scholz at the Elysée in 2021 before he became chancellor of Germany, as well as other aspirant leaders—among them, in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky when he was running to be Ukraine’s leader.

This is a moment for Mr Macron and Sir Keir to get the measure of each other. Although quite different in style, they have plenty in common. Both hail from the centre-left: Sir Keir as a Labour moderate; Mr Macron as a former minister in a Socialist government. Both count Sir Tony Blair, a former prime minister, as a regular interlocutor. Both have a professional background outside politics: Sir Keir as a lawyer; Mr Macron as an investment banker. Both also happen to have been amateur pianists when young, and share a particular love of German composers including Beethoven.

Sir Keir arrives in Paris having restated his ambition that, if he became the next British prime minister, he would try to negotiate improvements to a Brexit deal agreed in 2020. Known as the Trade and Co-operation Agreement, it is due for a review in 2025-26. He would not seek to re-enter the European Union’s single market or customs union, but hopes for better arrangements across a broad swathe of subjects from border checks on animals and food to migration and defence and security.

In reality, however, the meeting in Paris is neither a moment for any negotiation, nor even preparations for it. France has always been clear that discussions about Brexit must take place between the British government and the European Commission in Brussels, and has consistently resisted any attempt by London to pull any bilateral strings. For the French, as Georgina Wright at the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank in Paris, points out, the meeting with Sir Keir is “more about listening to what Labour has to offer, and how it would hope to go about achieving it.”

Up to a point, the French have already turned the page on the dismal cross-channel years under Mr Johnson, and then Ms Truss. Broadly, they work well with Britain’s current prime minister, Rishi Sunak. Last year they agreed a deal to reinforce policing of “small boat” crossings from the French coast, although the results of the co-operation have been limited. The bilateral optics have improved too. In March the two governments got together at the Elysée for a Franco-British summit, the first for five years.

The French are well aware, though, that they also need to look ahead. It is hard not to see the appeal for them in working with a future British government under a leader who both voted against Brexit and is serious about engaging in a more structured and open-minded way with the EU, especially on defence and security. “The French really miss the strategic dimension that the British bring to the table,” says Mujtaba Rahman, of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. The chances are that Mr Macron and Sir Keir will get on well.

After Sir Keir’s audience, the trumpets will come out in force. The royal state visit begins on September 20th. It was postponed from March because of rioting over Mr Macron’s pension reform: now republican France is preparing for royal mania. Mr Macron is treating King Charles to a banquet at Versailles, which the French insist is a nod to a state dinner held there in 1972 for Queen Elizabeth, not a reminder of the reason their monarchs got into trouble in the past. The king will give a speech, at least partly in French, to members of both houses of parliament at the Senate, and visit Notre Dame, still under renovation after the fire in 2019. There will be events around climate change and biodiversity, as well as, naturellement, a trip to an organic vineyard near Bordeaux.

The king and Mr Macron, who sent a warm message to the British after Queen Elizabeth’s death last year, are said to have already forged a bond. As for the French at large, their media gave blanket live coverage to the queen’s funeral. Fully 71% say that they have a good opinion of the British royal family. Indeed back in 2015 a young and little-known French government minister argued that on some level the French “did not want the death” of their own king. The minister in question? Mr Macron. ■