Sir Keir Starmer to tell left-wing love-in as Anthony Albanese touches down in London

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will take to the stage with Australia’s Prime Minister at a left-wing global summit in London on Friday and champion Anthony Albanese as living proof that progressives can defeat right-wing populists.

Sir Keir’s leadership is under internal pressure just over a year after leading his Labour Party out of the political wilderness with a massive landslide win, partly due to his failure to stop small boats filled with migrants from crossing the English Channel.

UK Labour is languishing in the polls, which have been dominated by Nigel Farage’s Reform populist right movement for the best part of the year.

Reform is promoting hardline anti-immigration policies, including ending existing rights of visa holders who have indefinite leave to remain in the UK – a visa widely held by Australians living in the UK.

This month, the far-right activist and convicted criminal who goes by the name Tommy Robinson led Britain’s largest nationalist rally in living memory through central London.

Elon Musk, whose X platform spreads sympathetic content, including disinformation addressed the rally virtually.

At a showstopping event set for Friday local time, the “Three Eyes” leaders, Mr Albanese, the UK’s Keir Starmer and Canada’s Mark Carney, who this week teamed up to recognise Palestine at the UN will take the stage together in central London.

They will headline the Global Progress Action Summit, appearing in conversation along with Iceland’s Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, who recently praised their joint recognition of Palestine at the UN as “an event of great significance.”

A Labour party statement said that Sir Keir would hail their success as hope for progressives worldwide.

“The Prime Minister will state that the recent election victories hard-won by Albanese, Carney, the Labour Party he leads, and many other examples around the world, are living proof that progressive values can overcome those who seek to divide societies, and underline how important it is that progressives come together to win the argument by ensuring everyone is included in our shared national story,” the statement said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese landed in London on Friday night for two major appearances at left-wing conferences, after debuting at the United Nations General Assembly and a fleeting selfie encounter with US President Donald Trump.

Toasting what the government believes was a terrific visit, including the Prime Minister’s first-ever address to the United Nations’ 80th General Assembly in midtown Manhattan, Mr Albanese headed downtown to the renowned watering hole, the Old Mates Pub, with some of his staff and his cabinet colleagues, Penny Wong.

He stayed there until the early hours of the morning, even jumping behind the bar to pour beers.

“Australians know how to have fun,” Mr Albanese told patrons in a speech that was filmed and published on social media.

The convivial mood will continue across the Atlantic when Mr Albanese is set to headline the UK Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, the home of the Beatles.

On Friday, he will meet a string of left-wing leaders, including the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, who, like Mr Albanese, opposes immediate increases to defence spending and favours spending on welfare instead.

While Mr Albanese will meet former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a bilateral and attend a trilateral meeting with Mr Carney and Sir Keir in Downing Street, he will also host the UK Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch for talks.

The left-wing summit is aimed at thrashing out solutions for the world’s progressive political parties to combat the populist right.

Mr Albanese and Mark Carney are likely to be given a hero’s welcome, having bucked 2024’s incumbency curse to post-election victories, propelled by US President Donald Trump’s bullying approach towards both countries on trade.

Organisers of Friday’s progressive summit will focus on national security, delivering on economic growth, migration and building progressive societies, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research, a British centre-left think tank.

Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of IPPR, said Australia’s 94-seat win for Labor was among the hopeful starts in combating the populist right.

“But now governments in all three countries – and progressive leaders elsewhere – need to raise their eyes from their immediate challenges and develop fresh ways of thinking for the years ahead,” he said.

“This conference will be an opportunity to begin that urgent work – and with it to rekindle optimism about what good progressive government can achieve, far into the future.”

The event is backed by progressive British and US think tanks and comes as the centre-left faces an onslaught of populist movements across Europe.

Prime Minister Carney said ahead of the summit that it would “advance policies that catalyse sustainable economic growth” and business conditions that “can thrive in this transformed geopolitical landscape.”

But two US Democrats, including one of Donald Trump’s chief critics, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and former Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, may end up stealing the show.

Both are considered as potential Democratic 2028 contenders.

Another is California Governor Gavin Newsom who has been ridiculing Donald Trump online.

Mr Newsom posted photographs of himself hugging Australia’s Ambassador to the United States Gavin Newsom, during a meeting this week in New York with Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen.

And in what the White House could interpret as an endorsement of the President’s most high-profile critic, Mr Albanese went further in singling out the Californian Governor as a example of a US state that would continue with climate change measures, despite Mr Trump’s opposition.

US President Donald Trump used his fiery address to the UNGA to warn European nations that their countries were going to hell over the issue of uncontrolled migration and urged them to also dump clean energy programs, claiming that climate change was a scam.

Mr Albanese will spend Saturday flying to Scotland to visit King Charles III at Balmoral.