Britain and France do not share a fixed quota of political stability such that reduced volatility on one side of the Channel causes chaos across the water. It was just a coincidence that Keir Starmer won a huge majority at precisely the moment last July when legislative elections made France ungovernable for Emmanuel Macron.

It was a misfortune for both men, and for Europe, that their political trajectories were out of sync. Macron had dealt with four Tory prime ministers before finding a potential ally in the ascendant Labour leader. By then his presidency was in spiralling decline. Britain was rousing itself from Brexit delirium just as France was losing the plot.

The two conditions are not comparable in scale. France’s parliamentary paralysis is a big mess. Britain leaving the EU was a monumental calamity. But they are alike, as harms that were self-inflicted at the ballot box by arrogant leaders with misplaced confidence in their powers of persuasion.

David Cameron held a referendum in 2016 because he was sure he could charm voters into keeping EU membership. Theresa May incinerated the Tories’ parliamentary majority in 2017 because she was convinced the country would recoil from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party and give her a vast personal mandate to enact Brexit.

Macron’s folly had elements of both errors. He dissolved the national assembly last summer because he imagined fresh elections would focus moderate French minds on the threat posed by the far-right National Rally (RN), which had recently triumphed in European elections. He was right, up to a point. Millions of voters did mobilise to deny RN a majority, but to the benefit of leftwing parties that despise the president.

Macron responded by trying to form governments from a depleted pool of loyal centrists, in denial of parliamentary arithmetic and defiance of the convention that presidents name prime ministers with some deference to the will of the........

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