{"id":115649,"date":"2026-09-02T05:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/115649\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T05:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:55:10","slug":"la-bonhomie-is-back-macron-arrives-in-britain-bearing-gifts-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/115649\/","title":{"rendered":"La bonhomie is back: Macron arrives in Britain bearing gifts \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Burnham<\/a> spent the summer striving to prove to the UK\u2019s Labour Party that he will be a better, more empathetic general than his predecessor, Keir Starmer<\/a>. But could he be a luckier one, too?<\/p>\n

The timing this week of his first hosting of a world leader in London suggests that he might be.<\/p>\n

Anglo-French relations are under the spotlight with the arrival in Britain on Wednesday of France\u2019s<\/a> president, Emmanuel Macron<\/a>. He is in town to formally unveil the near-1,000-year-old Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum<\/a> in London\u2019s<\/a> leafy Bloomsbury district, where it is on loan from the French government until next July.<\/p>\n

The temporary relocation of the priceless 70-metre-long embroidery, which depicts the Norman conquest of Britain right up to Battle of Hastings in 1066, was championed by Macron in 2018 at the height of the Brexit<\/a> negotiations with Theresa May<\/a>, one of Burnham\u2019s many recent predecessors as UK prime minister.<\/p>\n

Macron saw his offer to loan the artwork, which hadn\u2019t been on British soil for almost a millennium, as a way of buttressing his nation\u2019s ties with the UK at a time when they were under strain due to messy geopolitics. The French had repeatedly refused to lend the Bayeux Tapestry to the British over the previous century or so.<\/p>\n

Against the advice of many French experts, who feared the tapestry could be damaged, it was spirited into Britain overnight in July in a high-security, high-stakes operation. A single tear in the fabric, and Macron might be put in fear of France\u2019s political guillotine.<\/p>\n

The arrival of the historical embroidery has sparked giddiness in Britain and also a round of sentimental soul-searching in UK media over the country\u2019s relations with its closest neighbour to the east.<\/p>\n

H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Duch\u00eane, France\u2019s ambassador to Britain, was recently brought on to Sky News to discuss the tapestry\u2019s arrival, where she mused with her hosts that the loan deal said much about Britain and France\u2019s \u201cpast, but also about our future\u201d.<\/p>\n

The day after unveiling the tapestry, and after a short expected meeting with king Charles<\/a>, Macron is expected to hold talks with Burnham in London on Thursday. He will be the first European Union leader to do so with the new UK prime minister on British soil, beating the Republic\u2019s Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a>, who may be in line for a visit to Burnham\u2019s old stomping ground of Manchester at the end of the third week of September.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0No more summer sunshine for Burnham as the real work beginsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Macron will also be the first world leader of any sort to be greeted by Burnham at his new home of Downing Street (the UK prime minister briefly hosted Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> in July, but in Portsmouth).<\/p>\n

This is where the new UK prime minister\u2019s good timing comes in. Macron\u2019s arrival comes just as Anglo-French relations reach their warmest point in years. Much of the spade work on the UK side was put in by Starmer, but that lucky general Burnham reaps the benefit.<\/p>\n

For the past four or five years, Anglo-French relations have been viewed domestically in Britain principally through the prickly prism of migrant small boat arrivals. But recent deals done with the French under Starmer have stemmed the flow significantly.<\/p>\n

July\u2019s total number of arrivals was the lowest for the peak summer month since 2020. French police, with funding from London, stopped 60 per cent of small boat launches in the past three months. The British are paying to put 40 per cent more \u201cboots on the ground\u201d to patrol French beaches. The UK press has taken note.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the two nations in effect jointly lead the \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d helping Ukraine in its fight against Russia; they recently co-operated, for example, on giving Zelenskiy\u2019s government the blueprints for Storm Shadow missiles.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Starting gun fires on Europe\u2019s make-or-break election in FranceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

France and Britain are also joint linchpins in European discussions around upgrading the continent\u2019s defences, while as two nuclear-armed permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, they have also co-operated in self-perceived roles as geopolitical grown-ups in the dangerous age of US president Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

All in all, la bonhomie is back.<\/p>\n

Luckily for Burnham, this will do him no harm as he pursues closer relations with the European Union while, so far, offering little in return.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the hype machine for the Bayeux Tapestry is cranking up. It opens for public viewing on Thursday next week but all tickets until December were snapped up in one day when they were released in July. Some people queued online for nine hours to get them.<\/p>\n

The next tranche will be up for grabs online on October 21st. There has been some controversy, however, around private viewings for well-connected individuals, such as billionaire Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is a home-grown alternative for those who cannot secure a coveted ticket to view the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. In the late 1880s, a group of women who were members of a Staffordshire embroidery club stitched a full-sized, faithful replica, which to this day is on display at a little museum in Reading, just west of London.<\/p>\n

A faithful replica in all respects but one.<\/p>\n

As it was stitched in prudish Victorian Britain, the Staffordshire ladies censored all of the warriors\u2019 penises that could be seen in the original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham spent the summer striving to prove to the UK\u2019s Labour Party that he will be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[7786,13,1401,1249,94,2708,47333],"class_list":["post-115649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-andy-burnham","tag-britain","tag-british-museum","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-keir-starmer","tag-king-charles","tag-peter-thiel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117199904711569076","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}