Recently, at one of those ten election campaign duels that the prime ministerial candidates fought in front of their Tory party members over the summer, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were asked the following question: Is Emmanuel Macron friend or foe? "Friend," Sunak replied without hesitation. "The verdict is still pending," said Truss about the president of neighboring and NATO partner France. Mind you, at that time she was still officially Foreign Minister and thus the highest-ranking diplomat in the kingdom. She then followed up with a similar "I won't judge him by his words, but by his actions", which may have been meant to calm things down, but only made things worse.

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