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POLITICS

UK opposition chief Starmer talks security, energy, Ukraine and Europe with Macron

British opposition chief Keir Starmer on Tuesday held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, seeking to enhance his standing as a potential international leader with the Labour Party increasingly confident it can take over from Britain's ruling Conservatives.

UK opposition chief Starmer talks security, energy, Ukraine and Europe with Macron
UK Labour Leader Keir Starmer. Photo by Minas Panagiotakis / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

The French president has dealt with no less than four UK Conservative premiers over the last half decade during a period of political turbulence in Britain that has seen surging tensions between Paris and London.

He and Starmer spoke about “the importance of strengthening cooperation between France and the United Kingdom, so that this partnership continues ensuring prosperity and security for the French and British people,” Macron’s Elysée Palace office said in a statement.

More specifically, the pair “discussed the need to guarantee economic and energy security in Europe and reiterated their desire to lend continued support to Ukraine,” the Elysée added.

The closed-door talks at Macron’s Elysee Palace in Paris came as part of a mini-international tour for Starmer.

He visited Europol in The Hague last week and appeared alongside fellow centre-left leaders – including Canada’s Justin Trudeau and former British prime minister Tony Blair – at a weekend gathering in Montreal.

In a Sunday interview billed by the Financial Times as Starmer “stepping onto the global stage”, he told the newspaper he would “attempt to get a much better deal for the UK” with the EU.

The post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation agreement struck by ex-PM Boris Johnson is due for review in 2025.

Starmer, who has been wooing international investors as a potential PM, on Tuesday posted a photo on Twitter with business leaders before seeing Macron.

“My Labour government will provide the economic stability needed for international business to invest in the UK,” he wrote.

France is a partner of rare importance for Britain as an EU heavyweight, close military ally and fellow nuclear power, fellow UN Security Council member and immediate neighbour.

Cross-Channel ties have warmed under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a former banker like Macron whose relationship with the president has been dubbed a “bromance” by parts of the media.

But with his party struggling in the polls, the Conservative leader must call an election by January 2025 – even as he confronts stubborn challenges including inflation and irregular arrivals of migrants across the Channel.

Even so, Macron’s invitation was “not an endorsement, it’s not going to be a negotiation,” Georgina Wright, a European politics expert at French think-tank Institut Montaigne told AFP ahead of his meeting with Starmer.

“It’s really just a question of meeting and hearing what Labour would do differently and that’s it,” she added, saying Macron would be “as much as he can in listening mode” but may also “highlight France’s priorities”.

“Macron does this all the time” but “never once has he endorsed a candidate” ahead of an overseas election, Wright noted – recalling his meetings with German candidates including now-Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his opponent Armin Laschet ahead of the 2021 election to the Bundestag.

Struggling to make headway on his legislative priorities in a hung parliament, Macron also has a domestic political interest in showing he remains a coveted interlocutor abroad.

Any British-French meeting was likely to include discussion of migration, as one of Sunak’s biggest political headaches is the frequent arrivals in small boats from northern France.

Starmer last week signalled that he would like Britain to join an EU-wide quota system for sharing out migrants.

The arrangement has come under strain following record arrivals on the Italian island of Lampedusa and Germany’s suspension of accepting migrants living in Italy.

Starmer’s trip to France also comes the day before a state visit by King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

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POLITICS

Macron warns of ‘civil war’ if far right or hard left win election

President Emmanuel Macron warned that the policies of his far-right and hard-left opponents could lead to ‘civil war’, as France prepared for its most divisive election in decades.

Macron warns of ‘civil war’ if far right or hard left win election

French politics were plunged into turmoil when Macron called snap legislative elections after his centrist party was trounced by the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in a European vote earlier this month.

Weekend polls suggested the RN would win 35-36 percent in the first round on Sunday, ahead of a left-wing alliance on 27-29.5 percent and Macron’s centrists in third on 19.5-22 percent.

A second round of voting will follow on July 7th in constituencies where no candidate takes more than 50 percent in the first round.

Speaking on the podcast Generation Do It Yourself, Macron, 46, denounced both the RN as well as the hard-left France Unbowed party.

He said the far-right “divides and pushes towards civil war”, while the hard-left La France Insoumise, which is part of the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, proposes “a form of communitarianism”, adding that “civil war follows on from that, too”.

Reacting to Macron’s comments, far-right leader Jordan Bardella told French news outlet M6: “A President of the Republic should not say that. I want to re-establish security for all French people.”

Bardella, the RN’s 28-year-old president, earlier Monday said his party was ready to govern as he pledged to curb immigration and tackle cost-of-living issues.

“In three words: we are ready,” Bardella told a news conference as he unveiled the RN’s programme.

READ ALSO What would a far-right prime minister mean for foreigners in France?

Bardella has urged voters to give the eurosceptic party an outright majority to allow it to implement its anti-immigration, law-and-order programme.

“Seven long years of Macronism has weakened the country,” he said, vowing to boost purchasing power, “restore order” and change the law to make it easier to deport foreigners convicted of crimes.

He reiterated plans to tighten borders and make it harder for children born in France to foreign parents to gain citizenship.

Bardella added that the RN would focus on “realistic” measures to curb inflation, primarily by cutting energy taxes.

He also promised a disciplinary ‘big bang’ in schools, including a ban on mobile phones and trialling the introduction of school uniforms, a proposal previously put forward by Macron.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of Macron’s Renaissance party poured scorn on the RN’s economic programme, telling Europe 1 radio the country was “headed straight for disaster” in the event of an RN victory.

On Tuesday, Attal will go head-to-head with Bardella and the leftist Manuel Bompard in a TV debate.

On foreign policy, Bardella said the RN opposed sending French troops and long-range missiles to Ukraine – as mooted by Macron – but would continue to provide logistical and material support.

He added that his party, which had close ties to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine, would be “extremely vigilant” in the face of Moscow’s attempts to interfere in French affairs.

Macron insisted that France would continue to support Ukraine over the long term as he met with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

“We will continue to mobilise to respond to Ukraine’s immediate needs,” he said alongside Stoltenberg at the Elysee Palace.

The election is shaping up as a showdown between the RN and the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire, which is dominated by the hard-left La France Insoumise.

Bardella claimed the RN, which mainstream parties have in the past united to block, was now the “patriotic and republican” choice faced with what he alleged was the anti-Semitism of Mélenchon’s party.

La France Insoumise, which opposes Israel’s war in Gaza and refused to label the October 7th Hamas attacks as ‘terrorism’, denies the charges of anti-Semitism.

In calling an election in just three weeks Macron hoped to trip up his opponents and catch them unprepared.

But analysts have warned the move could backfire if the deeply unpopular president is forced to share power with a prime minister from an opposing party.

RN powerhouse Marine Le Pen, who is bidding to succeed Macron as president, has called on him to step aside if he loses control of parliament.

Macron has insisted he will not resign before the end of his second term in 2027 but has vowed to heed voters’ concerns.

Speaking on Monday, Macron once again defended his choice to call snap elections.

“It’s very hard. I’m aware of it, and a lot of people are angry with me,” he said on the podcast. “But I did it because there is nothing greater and fairer in a democracy than trust in the people.”

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