Nato’s first secretary general once said the alliance’s job was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. The European Political Community (EPC)’s purpose, as one European diplomat quipped to me this week, is less ambitious: to keep post-Brexit Britain in touch with the continent. On 18 July, 14 days into his government, Keir Starmer was happy to oblige. He hosted the EPC, which brought together more than 45 European leaders, at Blenheim Palace, the country pile of the dukes of Marlborough in rural Oxfordshire.
This was a gift for the new Prime Minister. At the Nato summit in Washington DC last week, he got an audience in the Oval Office. This week on a palatial stage, he sought to “reset” relations with Europe. Much as he wants to restore “stability” at home, Starmer has promised a return to normality abroad. He talks a lot about tone. He wants it to be mature, consensual and professional. The plan was to affirm support for Ukraine and get the Prime Minister on friendly terms with the Europeans. Only then, the thinking goes, can issues such as illegal migration be dealt with. After years of unease over Brexit, such niceties are judged essential.
To that end, Starmer bounced through the Leaders’ Lounge and the Water and Italian Gardens, grabbing moments with the heads of government present. After sipping Guinness with the Irish taoiseach Simon Harris at Chequers on Wednesday, he strolled along the palace’s terraces with President Emmanuel Macron before they sat down with their teams for a working dinner on Thursday. Meanwhile, the original 1949 Treaty of London, which created the European Convention of Human Rights, was hauled out of the archives and put on display at a reception hosted by the King.
For all its spectacle, the EPC’s importance should not be overstated. It is one among many such forums which all compete for resources and attention: the EU, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council for Europe, the European Court for Human Rights, the Permanent Structured Cooperation within the EU’s common defence policy. On top of that, the EPC is a self-defined talking shop. By design, it does not produce anything solid, not even a communiqué. Individual countries can release statements if they like. But the group does not agree anything en masse. It’s a get-together; a diplomatic day out for Europe’s statesmen to cajole, befriend and pressure each other in private.
Starmer is better suited to this genteel environment than his predecessors: the Tory party hostage, the Brexit mascot and the slapstick revolutionary. He is a pro-European. He once wrote a 990-page textbook on European human rights law. At the plenary, he laughed as he remembered first reading the European Convention on Human Rights 40 years ago in a Leeds library. In opposition, he and his team invested time in getting to know politicians across both the Atlantic and the Channel. At the Munich Security Conference in February, for instance, Starmer privately met with Olaf Scholz, Ursula von der Leyen, Mark Rutte, Petr Pavel, Jonas Gahr Støre.
This preference for behind-the-scenes tête-à-têtes hopefully explains why journalists were detained in a mammoth marquee. The organisers would not let print journalists near the palace. Instead they provided a paddock in the sunshine with stripey blue deckchairs and a gelateria van. We were put out to graze. At midday the tannoy announced that the Blenheim Palace gift shop was open for all. It reminded one old lobby hand that the best bars for journalists in Brussels were always those subsidised by the European Commission.
Inside the palace, Labour claimed that substantive progress was made. Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, mooted a UK-EU bilateral for next year, which could be key to securing Labour’s much-heralded security pact with the EU. But illegal immigration was the main topic at the EPC. Starmer announced £84m for education and poverty programmes in the Middle East and Africa to stop people leaving as well as promising more British police for Europol in order to tackle the smuggling gangs.
Immigration is no longer a taboo subject for Europe’s diplomatic elite. Countries with governments from the left and the right chose to attend the EPC’s working group on migration, including Starmer and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. While it is now recognised as a problem, a solution proves more elusive. Starmer knows that progress on the small boats is central to holding onto voters in marginal seats. He suggested he was interested in negotiations surrounding European-wide third-party processing, such as Italy’s deal to process asylum seekers in Albania, which is similar to the Rwanda scheme (though if a migrant’s application is approved they are sent back to Italy). The Prime Minister said the summit was an opportunity “to say together ‘no more’” to illegal migration. Strong words.
On other topics, he was less forthcoming. At a press conference, Starmer avoided questions on the Hungarian president Viktor Orbán and the Maga heir apparent JD Vance, while lowering expectations on how quickly the boats can be stopped. Macron showed more aplomb (“We can have a debate if you like, but I thought this was a press conference,” was his riposte to one question on the Armenia-Azerbaijan war.) But Starmer was not there to parade for the media. Diplomacy works in increments. The EPC was not a place for Starmer to strike deals. Instead, it was to build, and be seen to build, rapport with his counterparts.
As the leaders arrived that morning, a small group of protesters waved EU flags outside the palace’s gates. They will be disappointed that Starmer won’t lead the country back to Brussels. But the EPC showed that Labour will ensure the UK, in the words with which he opened the summit, is “not part of the European Union, but very much part of Europe”. If Starmer manages to achieve a security pact, a closer economic relationship and cooperation over migration with the Europeans before the next election, then Blenheim could be remembered as the place where he built the relationships that made it possible.
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