Keir Starmer faces a whirlwind of international diplomacy during his first two weeks in power as he seeks to build alliances on the world stage.
The new prime minister has barely moved in to 10 Downing Street and he is already flying to Washington today to attend a Nato summit, before he hosts European leaders in Oxford next week.
What did the commentators say?
Starmer and Joe Biden have spoken “warmly” about the importance of the “special relationship” between the two countries in their first call together, said The New York Times. Not since Barack Obama’s first term, from 2009-13, have Britain and the US “both been in the hands of centre-left parties”, although it could be a “brief era” with the presidential election looming.
“That’s not to say that British and American leaders from opposite parties can’t work together.” Obama issued a warning about Brexit at “the behest” of David Cameron, and Tony Blair “famously supported” George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
Trump and Starmer could even become “unlikely allies”, said Oliver Duff on the i news site. Both men’s teams realise they “may need to forge a new alliance in office, amidst global crises”.
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has previously described Trump as a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath”, so he “may find that some of his earlier oratorical fury comes back to haunt him”, said Eliot Wilson in The Spectator. But Lammy has been “meeting senior figures from the Republican Party in recent weeks”, said Duff, in an effort to smooth relations between Labour and Trump’s party.
Closer to home, Starmer is taking power at “a time of great strain” for France’s President Emmanuel Macron, said Amelia Hadfield, a politics professor at the University of Surrey, on The Conversation.
“Cynics could argue” that this would strengthen Starmer’s hand should he seek a better deal with France on managing cross-channel migration. But Macron could be a valuable ally of the prime minister’s in seeking to “regain influence in the European Union”.
Lammy is “understood to be particularly interested in realigning the UK with its historic connections with France”, said Politics Home. The current uncertainty in France after the parliamentary elections makes Macron’s relationship with the new prime minister “even more important” as he seeks support from various quarters.
Starmer has already built an alliance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by confirming that Britain’s support for his military will continue. Relations with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu could be thornier, particularly if, as reported by The Guardian, Starmer drops a bid to delay the International Criminal Court reaching a decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli PM over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
What next?
Starmer will be “mobbed” at the Nato summit this week, said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington from 2016 to 2019, and “everyone will want to talk to him”. His “remarkable” election victory might give him a “sheen of political stardust” with his fellow leaders, “for whom such victories have been in short supply” lately, said The New York Times.
But international relations are never easy and “tensions could emerge” at the gathering of Western leaders, said The Independent. The celebrations of an alliance that has lasted 75 years might be “overshadowed” by differences about levels of help for Ukraine and “when, or even whether” Ukraine might join Nato.
The following week Starmer will “play host” to 50 leaders at the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace. There, we can “expect to hear a lot of talk about improving relations”, about “being a more reliable partner”, and above all about “being more stable and predictable,” foreign policy expert James Strong told Agence France-Presse.