Sir Keir Starmer has returned from a Nato summit in Washington to prepare for his second step on to the world stage — hosting a European forum in Britain that his predecessor Rishi Sunak hoped would not happen.
On Thursday Starmer will try to “reset” Britain’s strained post-Brexit relations with Europe when the prime minister convenes over 45 leaders at Blenheim Palace — Sir Winston Churchill’s birthplace — for a one-day European Political Community summit.
The EPC, the brainchild of French President Emmanuel Macron, is often seen in diplomatic circles as a grandiose talking shop that brings together EU countries and other states including the UK and Turkey.
Liz Truss signed Britain up during her short stint as prime minister and went to its first summit in Prague in 2022.
For Sunak, who lost last week’s UK election, the prospect of hosting the gathering was a major distraction as he prepared to face voters and he repeatedly delayed setting a date for it.
“There were lots of things going on and there was some uncertainty about whether it was going to happen,” said one ally of the former prime minister. “It only happened because the French pushed it very hard.”
Starmer, who will host the French president for dinner at the 18th century Blenheim Palace after the summit, will be grateful Macron insisted.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for Keir Starmer,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a UK think-tank. “He’ll have a lot of European leaders in a room. The timing could not have been more fortuitous.”
British officials say Starmer will use the Blenheim Palace event to set out his hopes for improved UK-EU relations, even if, as Grant notes, there is a “slight niggling worry that he doesn’t know what he wants to do”.
The prime minister has made clear that he sees a UK-EU security pact as a building block for better relations, but his insistence that he will not take Britain back into the EU, single market, customs union, or the free movement regime is a huge obstacle.
He will be seeking a deal to stop food being delayed at borders due to a shortage of vets as well as mutual recognition of professional qualifications. Rachel Reeves, chancellor, has said Labour might try to align Britain’s rules on chemicals with those of the bloc.
But the EU has always resisted anything it regards as “cherry picking” from the benefits of the single market and is expected to demand a high price for any deal that significantly improves the UK’s access to EU markets.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has called for a “reset” in relations, though the Commission itself is broadly satisfied with the trade deal made with Boris Johnson’s government in 2020. There is very little appetite in Brussels for a rewrite of the agreement when it comes up for review in 2026.
Eric Mamer, the Commission’s chief spokesperson, said this week that it was for London to make the first move. Brussels had an “open mind” on new agreements with the UK but the current arrangements were based on a “series of red lines set by the UK”, he said.
The EPC agenda conveniently feeds into Starmer’s plan to use security as a springboard for better relations, with a heavy focus on the war in Ukraine.
Talks include a plenary session on EU security followed by three breakout groups on migration, defending democracy, and energy and connectivity, alongside strawberries and cream and around 800 scones.
“I said I would change the way the UK engages with our European partners, working collaboratively to drive forward progress on these generational challenges,” Starmer said ahead of the meeting. “That work starts at the European Political Community meeting on Thursday.”
The idea of using Britain’s strengths in the security field — including its strong military and intelligence services — to prise open better post-Brexit relations with the EU had also been considered by the previous Conservative government.
Civil servants have dusted down proposals for closer UK-EU relations on security that had been drawn up more than 18 months ago, before attention on Whitehall turned to work on the Windsor framework, a deal to settle a Brexit trading dispute in Northern Ireland.
Starmer said during his visit to Washington that he had discussed the idea of a “formal mechanism” for UK-EU security co-operation during bilateral meetings at the Nato summit, and that a plan to repair post-Brexit damage had been well-received by allies.
Joe Biden, US president, told Starmer: “I kind of see you guys as the knot tying the transatlantic alliance together, the closer you are with Europe.”
The idea of the UK as a link for Washington between a free-trading US and a more statist EU continental model fell apart after the Brexit vote in 2016.
“There was a sense after Brexit that the UK has become too inward-looking, was not as interested as it once was in its place on the global stage,” Starmer said at the end of the Nato summit. “The UK is confident, is back.”
Turning to his plan for deeper relations with Brussels, Starmer told the Financial Times: “We can do more work with our EU partners when it comes to security. I think that’s good for us, and good for them.”
The UK’s new posture will involve increasing trade and investment with international partners, as well as deeper co-operation on tackling climate change, Starmer said.
Earlier UK Defence Secretary John Healey said that the UK would seek to join more EU military programmes, as he warned the world was facing “a decade or more” of Russian aggression.
Britain is already part of one programme in Pesco, the EU’s framework for defence co-operation, to ease the transportation of military hardware across the continent. Healey declined to say which further programmes the UK was interested in joining.
He stressed that while Britain wants to secure an overarching security pact with the bloc, such an agreement is not required for closer integration with its defence programmes, or deals with member states. He ruled out Britain joining a European defence force.
Labour is eyeing a security deal with Germany by the end of the year, diplomats said, with Starmer looking to meet the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the European football championships final in Berlin on Sunday to talk further about the scope of any deal.
Starmer has joked that England only wins men’s football trophies when Labour is in power — the last time was in 1966. A victory for Gareth Southgate’s team on Sunday would be another fortuitous piece of timing for the new prime minister as he introduces himself to the world.