During his London stint, Charles de Gaulle behaved with a rudeness and hauteur to which an exile from a defeated state was not entitled. It worked. The “Monster of Hampstead” began to be treated as an Allied peer.
France emerged from the war with weird clout, including a permanent chair at the United Nations high table. In Julian Jackson’s historical work on the general, one lesson recurs: there is such a thing as strategic arrogance. Act grandly enough, convincingly enough, and people start to submit. (Where do you think I got the idea from?) De Gaulle, a hit film in France, makes the British scholar’s point often enough.
It is not the only Anglo-French collaboration of the day. Readers who plan to see the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum should manage their expectations. Because other artefacts in the building are so ancient, the embroidered cloth, a mere pup at 950 years old, can underwhelm. It should have had its own venue, as it does in Bayeux. Still, the fact of the loan is the point. It suggests a new tightness between the countries.
What has brought this about? Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump, mostly. As one threatens more harm and the other withholds protection, democratic Europe needs its two nuclear states to get on. It also helps that Brexit has disappointed most surveyed voters. A routine has formed in Britain: the government makes modest overtures to the Continent, the right screams betrayal, no one listens. Refugee boat crossings should have poisoned the relationship, and haven’t really.
RM Block
Britain and France have more in common with each other than either does with a third country
The Anglo-French moment should go much, much further. An outright union, or Frangleterre, which would pool the militaries and certain other functions of state, is an old idea whose time will never come. (Be glad, lest one or both of the countries fall into populist hands.) But closer political contact, more defence alignment and easier travel, of the Britain-Ireland kind: sheer pressure of events could make these happen.
Don’t take me for a sentimentalist. A lot of this is about safety in numbers in a savage world, not cultural communion. The two nations have contrasting views on big subjects, almost contrasting ideas of what freedom means, and I want the British one to prevail. Give me commercial individualism over the strategic state, multiculture over assimilation, global London over Europe-centric Paris. It is just that, in peacetime, when there was no autocratic predator state with which to compare ourselves, these differences seemed important. You have to be extraordinarily petty to prioritise them now.
Much clearer in 2026 are the similarities. People on each side tense up when I argue this, but Britain and France have more in common with each other than either does with a third country. It is not just their (eerily) similar population and GDP sizes. Both became nation states early, both have disproportionately huge capitals that are loathed in the heartland, both have had high numbers of non-white citizens for generations, both lost empires at the same time, both were indispensable to the Enlightenment and provoke corresponding mistrust from certain quarters.
Other countries have some of these traits, but perhaps none has all. Having seen both diplomatic corps up close, I suggest that each country’s “special” relationship with another – the US in the case of Britain, Germany in the case of France – is fussed over precisely because of underlying doubt about its strength.
To all these Anglo-French bonds, I would add a new-ish one, but there is no delicate way of putting it. The total world domination of English makes it easier for the two countries to get on, as there is no doubt about which side has to give way on language. Even a generation ago, when Jacques Chirac guarded French tenaciously in summits, that wasn’t so. Frangleterre was always going to trip on the language point. A new era of closeness won’t.
An unexpected image from the World Cup was that of French and English players locked in prayer together. Perhaps it could have happened in any era. But the tapestry loan, the new civility in high office, is hard to picture in the years before the Ukraine war. The proper identification of one’s friends is a life skill and there is nothing like mortal fear to teach it.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
