The Keir Starmer who flew back from Washington DC today is not the same prime minister who left London on Tuesday. He looks and sounds the same, but he thinks differently. He has experienced what all new prime ministers must: the foreign policy wake-up call.
It is the moment when a new occupant of Number 10 realises - despite all their grand plans for Britain, manifesto pledges and dreams of reform – just quite how much of the job is spent dealing with the rest of the world. At least Starmer’s learning curve came earlier than most, with the NATO summit falling in his first week of office by chance.
And altogether it was success for him. Team Starmer will say he was introduced to the world in a position of strength after a great election victory, established interpersonal relationships with other leaders and even made time for some football-related PR during the England v Netherlands Euros semi-final.
But, having to quickly find his feet, the new PM made two diplomatic missteps that he will not want to repeat.
The first was a miscommunication with President Zelensky of Ukraine on the subject of British long-range missiles. Speaking a little too loosely, the PM apparently gave Zelensky the impression that he would allow Ukraine to use these missiles for strikes inside Russia, escalating Britain’s role in the war. Downing Street had to issue a swift and robust clarification that the policy had not, in fact, changed. Rule one of diplomacy: communicate clearly and precisely.
The second misstep was his decision to intervene on the subject of President Joe Biden’s health, which is wracking American politics at the moment (today’s Evening Standard calls for the President to step down). Starmer described the President as “on really good form”. Then, after Biden gave a gaffe-filled press conference that raised further questions about his cognitive function last night, Starmer faced a grilling from British journalists about his earlier evaluation. It looked like something of an ordeal for the PM, as he desperately avoided saying anything controversial and stuck to his original line. Rule two: keep your nose out of other people’s gardens.
After his wake-up call this week, the PM will likely move to build the foreign policy team which he currently lacks. Despite rapid hiring across the rest of the government, Starmer still has not announced the appointment of a top foreign policy adviser (a mark of his lack of familiarity in this area, which took up just 12 pages in Labour’s 142-page manifesto). Consequently he was accompanied to Washington by John Bew, the long-term foreign policy adviser to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, who is stepping down imminently.
Remember that the most significant and longest-serving prime ministers of the last 50 years, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, both learned quickly to grasp the nettle of foreign policy (with mixed results). That’s no coincidence. Successful leaders ensure that foreign policy isn’t something that happens to them while they are busy making other plans. The British PMs who fell into that complacency trap form an infamous roll-call: Lord North, who lost America, Lord Aberdeen, who stumbled into the Crimean War, and H.H. Asquith, who took us into the First World War.
If Starmer truly does want to be a great prime minister who leads the so-called “decade of national renewal”, he will start paying a lot more attention to foreign policy after his Washington wake-up call.
In our comment pages today one of Sir Keir Starmer’s new hires, Solicitor General Sarah Sackman, takes us through her first rollercoaster week as the new Member of Parliament for Finchley and Golders Green.
Meanwhile our defence editor Robert Fox wonders if the UK can take some lessons improvisation from Ukraine, and over on the Business desk James Walton asks whether Rachel Reeves' newly-announced National Wealth Fund can work.
