Remembering Armistice Day: Starmer joins Macron to celebrate Franco-British friendship in Paris

With armed conflict again on their continent, many European leaders marked the end 106 years ago of First World War with warnings that liberty, so often taken as self-evident, should be cherished and defended.

With armed conflict again on their continent, many European leaders marked the end 106 years ago of First World War with warnings that liberty, so often taken as self-evident, should be cherished and defended.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, leaders both of nations with nuclear arsenals, were in Paris under the iconic Arc de Triomphe, where dozens of wreaths were touched by a milky light and the eternal flame flickered to honour sacrifices of unknown French soldiers who perished in the first global conflict. That war killed almost 10 million soldiers.

"I am honoured to be in Paris to stand united with President Macron in tribute to the fallen of the First World War who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom we enjoy today," Starmer said.

His Defence Secretary John Healey told Sky News the ceremonies amounted to a reminder that "we can never take the freedoms we enjoy in Europe for granted".

The First World War pitted the armies of France, the globe-spanning British empire, Russia and the United States against a German-led coalition that included the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Leaders from as far away as Australia, Canada and South Africa all joined in the remembrance.

Sometimes tens of thousands on a single day in northern France or in Flanders' Fields just across the border in Belgium along a front line that barely moved in four years. Such carnage was remembered under Ypres' Menin Gate in western Belgium, where some 55,000 names of soldiers whose remains were never found are engraved.