Gilded carriages and royal banquets are not essential tools of modern diplomacy, but nor are they obsolete. In a digital age, when intergovernmental business could easily be conducted online, the analogue grandeur of a state visit feels potent as a bestowal of favour.

This week Emmanuel Macron is the beneficiary. In September it will be Donald Trump. The sequence is not meant to indicate preference. Both relationships are special, say officials. There are enough champagne receptions and sleepovers at Windsor Castle to go around.

But it is also no accident that the French president was invited ahead of his US counterpart. Trump has had a state visit already, during his first term. Hardly anyone gets two. Macron, by contrast, has been in office since 2017 and dealt with five UK prime ministers. None before Keir Starmer rolled out the deep red carpet of ceremonial statecraft.

It was never going to happen with Theresa May or Boris Johnson in No 10. It was conceivable with Rishi Sunak, who got on fine with his French counterpart. As for Liz Truss, when asked during the 2022 Conservative leadership contest whether Macron should be considered friend or foe, she said: “The jury’s out.” It was a howling display of unsuitability for the job of prime minister. Naturally, with a Brexit-addled Conservative party doing the recruitment, the howler won.

Evicting the Tories was a necessary but not sufficient condition for upgrading cross-Channel relations. Starmer is........

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