There was more than a whiff of ‘bromance’ between Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron when they met at the Anglo-French summit in the city of love. The weather in Paris was grey and cold, but there was no denying the warmth of the greeting that Macron extended to Sunak as the PM arrived at the Elysee yesterday. This is hardly a surprise: after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, the president was just pleased to be hosting a PM who knows how to mind his Ps and Qs.

Sunak said he was ‘fortunate’ and ‘excited’ to have the opportunity to work with Macron, whom he described in French as ‘mon ami’. Macron looked genuinely touched to be addressed in such heartfelt terms.

They both described the great Anglo-French reset as a ‘new beginning’ – and Sunak went further, calling it an ‘Entente Renewed’. In what could be seen as a subtle slapdown of his two predecessors, the PM said that successful alliances were ‘about people’. Boris Johnson built his political career believing it is just about one person – himself – but Sunak spoke frequently of sharing, be it values, expertise or challenges.

What matters is that Sunak and Macron repair the damage caused by the Johnson years

While the war in Ukraine was a prominent theme, particularly for Macron, who has probably still not forgotten some of the mud that was slung his way at the start of 2022 (notably by Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, who accused him indirectly of appeasing Vladimir Putin), Sunak’s emphasis was on the migrant crisis.

He announced the creation of a detention centre in Northern France, as well as a new command centre for enforcement teams from both sides of the Channel. Five hundred police officers will be drafted in to patrol French beaches.

‘I think what you have seen today is an unprecedented level of cooperation on tackling this shared challenge because that is what it is, it is a shared challenge,’ said Sunak. ‘It is not just the UK that is grappling with illegal migration, it is not just France, it is countries across Europe.’

The centres will be funded by the UK as part of a £500 million three-year deal, that comes on top of the £63 million deal signed last November.

Macron, who talked of the ‘shared nature of our responsibility’, stressed the work that is being done by the French authorities to stop the small boats: 30,000 have been prevented from crossing the Channel and last year police broke up 55 smuggling networks across the country. He also made the point that stopping the small boats crossing the Channel is only one strand of the challenge; what is a migrant crisis for Britain and France is also a crisis for the continent as a whole.

If Sunak is serious about smashing the ‘criminal gangs’, as he calls them, who earn millions each year by people smuggling, his next port of call must be Rome. He and Macron won’t solve this problem on their own; they’ll need the cooperation of Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni and other European leaders whose countries are on the frontline of the migrant crisis.

In return for stopping the small boats, Macron wants greater cooperation with Britain on the international stage, particularly in the war in Ukraine. He also wants respect. The scars from the 2021 Aukus deal have not healed. A headline in Friday’s Le Figaro ran: ‘After the Aukus’ betrayal, the war in Ukraine is bringing France and the UK closer together’.

France’s relationship with Germany isn’t what it was, a result of their hesitancy in supplying equipment and weapons to Ukraine and their selfish response to Europe’s energy crisis. ‘Scholz isn’t very European at all, he’s much more ‘Germany first’,’ a senior member of Macron’s Renaissance Party was quoted as saying in January. Macron has also failed to establish a rapport with Olaf Scholz, who replaced Angela Merkel as Chancellor in December 2021.

Whether it’s an ‘Entente Renewed’ or a ‘Bromance’, what matters is that Sunak and Macron repair the damage caused by the Johnson years and together do what they can to stop the small boats and also stop Putin.