UK PM Starmer starts country’s reset with Europe as Trump and Vance loom

Keir Starmer spent the UK election campaign promising to reset Britain’s relationship with Europe after years of soured relations since Brexit. Just two weeks into his tenure, he’ll be able to immerse himself in that endeavour as he hosts over 40 of the continent’s leaders at Winston Churchill’s ancestral home on Thursday.

The Labour prime minister was able to take advantage of the general election’s serendipitous timing to meet with many key allies at last week’s NATO summit in Washington. But the meeting of the European Political Community bringing together leaders from inside and outside the European Union on home turf gives him the opportunity to burnish those nascent relations.

The informal format of the gathering means Starmer can essentially speed-date his counterparts through one-to-one bilateral meetings over scones, afternoon tea and strawberries and cream at Blenheim Palace, a huge country pile in England’s genteel Cotswolds area.

While US President Joe Biden won’t attend, the outcome of November’s presidential election will hang over the discussions, because of the different approaches he and his Republican opponent Donald Trump say they’d take to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Starmer has already hosted Ireland’s leader Simon Harris over pints of Guinness on the eve of the summit and will hold a private dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron afterward, an attempt to rebuild ties with the UK’s closest neighbours.

Leaders are set to hold workshops on migration, energy and connectivity, and defending and securing democracy. A thread running through the conference will be security, with the threat posed by Russia at the fore.

“European security will be at the forefront of this government’s foreign and defence priorities,” Starmer said in a statement on the eve of the summit. “I am focused on seizing this moment to renew our relationship with Europe.”

As Bloomberg reported earlier this month, the UK and some European nations plan to launch a “call to action” to target the so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that Russia uses to skirt international sanctions, and are also set to publish further evidence of Russia’s attempts to spread disinformation and undermine democracies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to attend, and a British official told reporters that Starmer aimed to use the summit to reaffirm UK and European military and financial support for Kyiv.

Yet, away from the headline agenda items, private conversations between leaders and officials will be focused on the potential upheaval across the Atlantic, where Trump and his new running mate JD Vance have been at best lukewarm on support for Ukraine.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy spent the past year while in opposition forging relationships with Republicans, including Vance. But in private Labour officials are disturbed by the would-be vice-president’s assertion that the UK is an “Islamist” country.

Vance’s comments about withdrawing support from Ukraine have also raised the alarm across the continent. Starmer, who spoke by phone with Trump after the attempt on his life at the weekend, is likely to face questions about Vance’s remarks in a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

The UK sees the EPC as an essential opportunity to move Britain closer to Europe should the “special relationship” with America become less stable, people familiar with the matter said. Their main concern about a potential second Trump term is his unpredictability, and Britain plans to strengthen ties to countries in the Indo-Pacific and Africa as well as Europe, in an effort to reduce reliance on the US, they said.

“There’s a real desire by the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to make sure that Britain plays its proper role in the world and a sense that that’s not happened for some years.” Catherine Ashton, former EU high representative for foreign affairs, told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday.

While a Trump second term would “certainly be different” from a Biden one and from his own first period in office, “a lot will depend on how far he sees America’s interests being partly about the relationships that he has outside, and of course Europe is critical to that,” she said.

The attempt to kill Trump and the image of the bloodied Republican nominee raising his fist in the air cemented his position as the clear favourite to win the presidency in the eyes of some officials who will attend the EPC. Not only that, those officials - who would prefer a Democrat president - said they feared the events had lifted some of the political pressure for Biden to step aside, when they had privately hoped his party would swap in a candidate with a better chance of winning.

The uncertainty over what a Trump victory would mean for the Russia-Ukraine war, US trade relations with Europe and a surge of populism across the continent provides the context for Starmer’s efforts to mend UK-EU ties.

Supporters of the campaign to remain in the bloc in 2016, Starmer and Lammy are ideologically predisposed to better relations with the EU - though they didn’t shout about their views in the election campaign.

Starmer wants to forge closer trade ties, but has also pledged to keep the UK out of the EU’s customs union and single market, a stance which makes it difficult for him to deliver a significantly different trading relationship.

Instead, the premier has chosen to focus on security and defense. Seeking a quick pact between the UK and EU, Starmer will use the EPC to make the case for closer relations in these areas, people familiar with the matter said. He’s picked a close ally, Nick Thomas-Symonds, to oversee talks.

However, EU officials cautioned that a comprehensive UK-EU defense and security pact may take time to agree. While Starmer’s team wants it to also cover economic and climate security, EU officials fret it may be used to alter post-Brexit trading arrangements that were the product of months of intense negotiations.

Migration will also feature, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Albanian premier Edi Rama leading discussions on the topic. While some European leaders had previously been uneasy about talking tough on migration, the debate has shifted and all governments agree on a need to confront people-smuggling, a British official said.

In an effort to stem a record influx of asylum seekers in small boats across the English Channel, Starmer’s administration is planning new funding for programs to incentivize would-be migrants to stay in their home countries - or in transit nations, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Labour has moved UK policy away from former premier Rishi Sunak’s failed plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which was accompanied by threats to ignore rulings by the European Court of Justice and even to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

That shift may make it easier to cooperate with Europe, a UK official said. If Trump makes it back to the White House later this year, that enhanced cooperation may become a necessity.

c2024 Bloomberg L.P.