View from London: Starmer and Macron are competing to see who destroys their country first

The histories of Britain and France have been intertwined for centuries. With two hapless leaders, they are now facing joint calamity. Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of international politics, the Yin and Yang of European declinism, the clownish poster boys of Western decadence, notes a famous observer Allister Heath at ‘The Telegraph’.

The French President is flamboyant, theatrical, Jupiterian and chases after windmills; the British Prime Minister is soporific, plodding, technocratic and more comfortable erecting windfarms. Macron the narcissist offers up faux-macho handshakes and bear hugs; Starmer the backroom apparatchik is more reserved.

Yet both are failing in strikingly similar ways, and appear to be guided by the same perverse playbook. As avatars of their countries’ decline, mocked at home and abroad, wedded to discredited “centrist dad” nostrums, they are the last defenders of an order that will soon be swept away by a tide of populist rage. If they are competing on anything, other than humiliating photo-opps with Donald Trump at Egyptian peace summits they had no role in convening, it is about who will complete the ruination of their country the fastest.

Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a messianic belief in environmentalism and global technocracy, unable to confront reality, gripped by suicidal empathy and addicted to virtue-signalling, Starmer and Macron have ended up as unlikely brothers in arms, despite their seemingly incompatible styles.

Both were elected on a promise of change, yet ended up defending the status quo. Both are in global retreat – France from Africa, Britain from Chagos – and are failing to bolster their armed forces quickly enough. Both are overseeing an explosion in anti-Semitism, often fuelled by Islamists, and are doing scandalously little about it. Both have lost control of immigration, with eerily similar numbers. Net immigration in the UK was 431,000 in the year to December 2024; France’s Insee reported net immigration of 433,000, taking the total to 7.7 million, or 11.3 per cent of the population, a record, albeit still lower than in the UK.

Starmer and Macron find their countries essentially ungovernable, and refuse to take responsibility. They claimed to be fiscally orthodox, yet put their countries on a path to bankruptcy, with terrifyingly large budget deficits.

Rachel Reeves seems determined to outdo Macron’s calamitous record: France’s national debt has shot up from 11 points above the Eurozone average when the president took office to 25 points today, hitting 116 per cent of GDP. The public sector gobbled up 57 per cent of France’s GDP in 2024; Britain still has a way to go, even if Labour is rapidly socialising the economy and waging war on the private sector with the Employment Rights Bill.

Such mutually assured economic destruction is working: Britain and France are neck-and-neck in the stagnation leagues, with the IMF predicting identically useless per capita growth of 0.4 per cent this year and France edging it slightly at 0.5 to 0.6 per cent next year. It remains to be seen who ends up wearing the dunce’s cap, but Starmer and Macron would be equally deserving recipients.

France’s great taboo is retirement at 62, placing an unbearable burden on its working population. Macron tried and failed to reform this, but finally gave up this week. Britain is in a better position on pensions, despite the triple lock and the public sector’s gold-plated deals, but is being dragged down by the obsolete NHS, our own political third rail.

Instead of tackling the underlying malady – the two nations are living beyond their means – Macron and Starmer are considering another destructive gamble this Autumn: a wealth tax. They aren’t acting in concert, but might as well be doing so, such is their apparent desire to chase away their greatest wealth-creators to the US or Middle East.

Britain and France’s destinies have been intertwined since the Norman Conquest, and now, led by historically inadequate leaders, are entering their fin-de-régime together.

Macron hacked the populist moment, creating a party staffed with fresh faces exuding radical vibes but doubled down on nothingness; he is paying the price for having conned the public. He destroyed not just his party but France’s post-1958 constitutional settlement, the Fifth Republic.

A far-Left candidate, fuelled by class war, hate and a belief in open borders, may yet win the presidential election. The most likely outcome, however, is that the Right’s Jordan Bardella will become President (if Marine Le Pen remains disqualified). Would he cope? Would he defeat the Blob? Would his socialist economics overshadow his law and order and immigration reforms, destroying him too? Will France’s mini-revolution, as it transitions to a Sixth Republic, take place peacefully, or will civil war break out?

Britain will take a different path. A Right-wing Government would usher in a restoration, not a revolution, undoing the post-1997 Blairite constitutional atrocities, withdrawing from noxious treaties and reestablishing democratic accountability over civil servants. Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch are pro-capitalist; this would be populism with English characteristics (a superior variant). But could a divided Right let in a Labour-led Leftist coalition?

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