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Keir Starmer appears to be prioritising his plans to reshape Britain’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU with a new security pact.
Speculation that talks are set to begin on the fringes of the Nato conference in Washington DC was heightened by his decision to bring his new minister for European relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds.
The new prime minister is also set to host the European Political Community (EPC) next week, a forum created by Emmanuel Macron to facilitate European relations post-Brexit.
It is expected the subject of the security pact will be broached there too, leading to speculation Labour will begin the process of integrating UK forces with those of the EU.
However, on the flight to the US, Sir Keir insisted that Nato “will remain the cornerstone” of UK defence relations but the work with the EU will be “complementary”.
Responding to The Independent, he said: “On the defence and security pact this is really important to us. I do think there is scope for a significant improving of our defence and security relationship with the EU.
“I think this is complementary with Nato. Nato is still the cornerstone of defence in Europe and our approach on defence has always been Nato first.
“I do see scope for complementing that. That is why we are wanting to advance the defence and security pact or agreement with the EU.”
He avoided discussing whether the UK will join more strands of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation, which is seen as the basis of creating a new European single military.
Currently the UK only belongs to one strand which allows travel of military forces across the continent, but even the last Tory government did not rule out further integration.
Proponents of an EU military point out it would save costs by sharing the burden across allies on the continent.
It would also strengthen Europe should Donald Trump be elected and carry out threats to withdraw from Nato.
Even if Trump is not elected, there are concerns that US priorities are increasingly in the Asia Pacific and not Europe - even after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Explaining why Mr Thomas-Symonds is on the flight to the Nato conference, Sir Keir said: “Look, this is straightforward. Because of the timing of the election, which was much discussed for other reasons, it has provided a really important window of opportunity for me and my team, because we’ve got the Nato summit within a week of the election, so we get the opportunity to strengthen our relations with various of the Nato leaders and others obviously that are there, including EU leaders.
“Now that is a follow up, if you like, on some of the phone calls that I’ve already had with international leaders that I’ve been doing since the King invited me to form a government.
“And then of course we’ve got the EPC coming up at the tail end of next week, so that’s why I wanted Nick and [foreign secretary] David [Lammy] and [defence secretary] John [Healy] and me – I want to make sure we take full advantage of this opportunity.
“These are meetings that would probably take months and months and months for us to fit in as a team, if we were not taking advantage of this summit for the purposes of those relations and the EPC.
“The central purpose is obviously all about Nato but it is a very important opportunity to strengthen those relations. We built them in opposition with Nato allies, so I’ve spoken to a lot of Nato allies when I was leader of the opposition.
“I’ve taken the opportunity to speak to them on the phone very early on in this government and I want Nick here, David here, and John here to double down on that, as you’d expect.”
