Emmanuel Macron: Bienvenu à Paris.
Keir Starmer: Bonjour, Monsieur le President. Thank you for organising this “once-in-a-generation” summit at such short notice.
Macron: Relax, mon vieux muckeur. No need for formalities just yet. We won’t get started for half an hour or so. Let’s just have a chat first.
Starmer: How do you mean?
Macron: Homme à homme. Strictly entre nous. Forget the diplomatic niceties for once …
Starmer: OK.
Macron: So, what did you make of the Munich Security Conference?
Starmer: I always guessed it would be a disaster. That’s why I gave it a miss …
Macron: Bon appel. You dodged a bullet. Imagine having to sit there while the oafish JD Vance slags us all off. Tells us we’re all finished as a civilisation and we’re on our own now. Doesn’t even think Ukraine should have a say in its own peace deal.
Starmer: Dis-moi about it. I’m getting that kind of merde at home from Kemi Mauvaisenoch. Only this matin she was telling some rightwing convention à Londres that the real war the west was facing was against diversity and equalities. This at a temps quand the Russians are literally killing scores of Ukrainians each day. She keeps disant que she is disant the unsayable. She hasn’t yet realised that nobody is stopping her saying anything.
Macron: Vraiment, elle est un demi-wit …
Starmer: Plus comme un quartier-wit.
Macron: Tu me crack en haut, Keir.
Starmer: No one has ever said that to me before …
Olaf Scholz: Guten Tag, alles.
Macron: Comment vas-tu, Olaf?
Scholz: I’m encore souffrant from PTSD auf München. Still struggling to believe que ça idiot Vance can go to Dachau and the one chose il learns from the experience is that Allemagne needs to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in prochaine semaine’s elections.
Macron: Ça c’etait incroyable.
Scholz: Oui. It presque makes me glad I’m going to be out of power soon. No longer having to deal with ces personnes will be un grand relief.
Starmer: I know quoi tu veux dire. David Lammy was telling me the UK got a long lecture on cancelling elections and religious freedoms. C’est comme we have tous stepped through the looking glass. It was only four years ago Donald Trump was inciting people to march on the Capitol building to overturn an election that had been legitimately won by the Democrats. All we have done is delayed some elections because the council seats won’t exist in a year’s time.
Macron: It’s depressing, n’est-ce pas? Comme marchant à travers treacle. Talking of which, how much glue do you think Le Donald uses dans ses cheveux? Chaque fois I look at lui, I get mesmerised.
Starmer: It’s the colour of his peau that gets moi. I don’t know how I am going to get through my visage à visage with him in Washington next week. I just find myself staring and wondering if il pense que le reste of us are weird for not spending hours under a sunbed each day.
Scholz: I am so glad you both said that. Those are precisely les pensées that I have, too. But I toujours feel I have to keep them to myself. I long to ask him what he sees when he looks in the miroir.
Macron: We should have these informal rendez-vous plus souvent. It’s good to share this stuff. Monde leader to monde leader. Anyway, bonne chance in America next week, Keir. I doubt I will be voyant Le Donald any time à bientôt. He doesn’t aime les Français that beaucoup. We tend to say what we think about him.
Starmer: Don’t think he likes the Brits much, either. He certainly doesn’t have much time for the Labour party. But I have choisi de flatter him whenever possible. Not that it has done much good. Congratulate him for having noticed there were wars going on that no one else had noticed. How we had all missed the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine …
Macron: OK, mes amis. Les autres sont arrivées. Let’s get on to le sommet officiel.
Starmer: Bonne idée.
Macron: It is time for Europe to step up. We can no longer count on American support in maintaining peace and security in the west.
Starmer: Pas si vite. The UK is willing to be a pont entre the US and Europe.
Donald Tusk: How would that marcher?
Macron: Keir goes grovelling to Washington, promises everyone will spend more on defence and then Trump does exactly what he was going to do in the first place.
Scholz: And what would that be?
Macron: Personne knows. Pas même Le Donald. That’s why we’ve got to be prepared to look after ourselves.
Tusk: I agree. We can no longer assume the US is a reliable member of Nato. If Trump walks comme un canard, quacks comme un canard, then il est probablement un canard. He has decided his interests are more aligned with Russia. He is on the side of dictators. That’s why the US and Russia are busy carving up Ukraine in Saudia Arabia.
Giorgia Meloni: I think a little fascism-lite can be molto attraente.
Macron: Tuez-moi, maintenant. Whose idea was it to invite Italy?
Everyone: Yours.
Starmer: Let’s not be so defeatist. I’m prepared to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP …
Tusk: Trump is demanding 5% …
Starmer: Well, it’s a start. And the UK is willing to put troops on the terre as a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
Macron: Combien?
Starmer: I’m not sure. At least 20.
Tusk: Well, count Poland out.
Macron: No point pleurant over spilt lait. May I conclude by saying that this sommet has been un grand succès? Europe has never been so united.
Donald Trump: There’s nothing better than watching Europe burn, baby, burn.
Vladimir Putin: I love it when you talk dirty.
