This is what you call taking a country by storm. King Charles and Queen Camilla’s state visit to Paris and then Bordeaux was always going to be a feast of bons mots and cordiality. Such is the rule of this diplomatic game. However, on a Richter scale of affability, Britain and France’s heads of state scored high. After all, France was one of the countries Queen Elizabeth II most visited during her long reign, and where she enjoyed five state visits. The affection runs deep.
If there ever was a rule that said one should not touch the monarch, that rule died in the streets of Paris on Wednesday afternoon. Or perhaps, a new rule was born: only a French president can touch the British sovereign. They didn’t go as far as their wives, who were on cheek-kissing terms at first sight, but Emmanuel Macron and the king were very often seen touching each other’s backs and arms during the couple of days they spent together. This didn’t feel like misplaced familiarity, but rather warm affinity between the two men. A most welcome change after the disastrous Boris Johnson and Liz Truss episodes, which saw the bilateral relationship between our governments sink deeper and deeper.
