France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Friday that his country will always be a friend of Great Britain, no matter who takes Boris Johnson’s place as prime minister. He said this after British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, one of the top candidates to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and a favourite over Rishi Sunak of the Conservative Party, refused to say if the French President was a “friend or an enemy.”
“As prime minister, I would judge him by what he does, not what he says. The verdict is in “Members of the Tory party’s base cheered as she said her answer.
During his trip to Algeria, Macron was asked what he thought of what Truss said. He told reporters, “The British people, the United Kingdom, is a friendly, strong, and allied nation, regardless of its leaders and sometimes even in spite of its leaders or the small mistakes they may make in order to show off.”
David Lammy, a spokesman for Britain’s opposition Labour Party, called Truss’s comments “disgraceful and worrisome.” He said that she “needlessly disrespected” one of Britain’s closest allies.
Nadhim Zahawi, the British finance minister and a supporter of Truss, backed her fellow worker by saying that Truss was joking.
The relationship between France and Britain has become worse since Brexit. Also, the two countries have taken very different steps in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Stanley Johnson, the father of Johnson, became a French citizen in May of this year. He said that Macron is a “very good friend of our country.”