Macron will turn on Starmer to save his own skin

Prime Minister needs to beware, French president will hurt Britain if he thinks it will help him get out of his current crisis

Emmanuel Macron will turn on Keir Starmer and Britain if he thinks it will save his own skin.
The Prime Minister met the French president in Paris on Thursday to win French support for his relations reset with the EU and to “turn the corner” on Brexit.
Mr Macron’s support will be vital in building political will behind the next generation of Brexit talks and to foster closer British ties with the bloc. But Sir Keir should remember that the avowedly pro-EU Mr Macron was the “bad cop” in Brussels during the first Brexit negotiations.
The Prime Minister received a warm welcome from Mr Macron in the latest of a string of meetings aimed at rebooting Anglo-French relations. It was in stark contrast to his attitude towards Boris Johnson, who Mr Macron reportedly derided as a “clown” when the relationship between Paris and London was badly strained.
Sir Keir invested time and effort in building bridges with Mr Macron before his election victory. Such assiduous courting could pay dividends if Mr Macron puts pressure on the European Commission to negotiate a more advantageous trade deal.
That would, however,  be a volte-face from Paris, which consistently pushed for the toughest stance from the commission during the painful years-long talks taking the UK out of the EU.
Mr Macron and his allies rarely missed an opportunity to pour scorn on Brexit and decry its failures, branding it an “intellectual fraud” based on “many lies”.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-Right National Rally who once called for a Frexit referendum and cheered Brexit, was Mr Macron’s true target.
Mr Macron wanted Britain to serve as a warning of what could happen to France if it chose Ms Le Pen over him as president in the 2022 elections.
It is no coincidence that the Anglo-French detente did not begin until after Mr Macron won his second term in a vote in which he accused Ms Le Pen of planning “Frexit by stealth”.
French voters soon set about humbling the president, stripping him of his absolute majority in the legislative elections two years ago and handing him a drubbing in this year’s European elections.
Stung by a crushing defeat at the hands of the National Rally, Mr Macron decided to call the people’s bluff and triggered a snap legislative election this summer.
The National Rally was poised to seize control of the government after the first round. Centrist and Left-wing parties stood down candidates in a cordon sanitaire to keep the hard-Right from power in the second round.
France now has an unprecedented hung parliament between National Rally, Macron’s centrists, and the victorious coalition of Leftist parties led by the hard-Left France Unbowed, which fell short of a majority.
Now it is France and Mr Macron which is mired in political crisis, while, thanks to a huge majority, Sir Keir and Britain appear like a beacon of comparative stability.
Mr Macron this week rejected the Left’s choice for prime minister, preventing the formation of a new government and leading to calls for his impeachment.
The president has two goals. One is to split the centre-Left Socialist Party from their alliance with the Eurosceptic France Unbowed so they join him in a coalition.
The other is to damage the nationalist Ms Le Pen’s chances of winning the 2027 presidential election which he cannot contest.
If Mr Macron thinks he can do that by ensuring Britain suffers at the hands of the EU on the new Brexit talks, he won’t hesitate.