Sir Keir Starmer and wife Victoria jet off to Washington DC (Image: Getty)
Keir Starmer’s plans to soften Brexit will take days not months as he takes advantage of two international summits to schmooze European leaders.
The Prime Minister revealed he will use the 75th anniversary gathering of Nato to tell European leaders he wants closer ties with Brussels.
Next week, at a conference organised by Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir will hammer home his desire to unpick the exit deal.
Sir Keir has taken the unusual step of taking his European minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, as well as Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Defence Secretary John Healey with him to Washington for the meeting of the Western alliance.
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Sir Keir Starmer takes questions from journalists, including Express political editor Sam Lister (Image: Jason Groves )
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The PM told reporters travelling with him to the summit: “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.”
Sir Keir said he will double down on the message that a meeting of the European Political Community next week at Blenheim Palace.
“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 David and John 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.”
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During the general election campaign, Rachel Reeves said she wanted to seek closer alignment with EU rules in the chemicals and veterinary sectors, better touring rights for UK artists, and greater mutual recognition of qualifications for financial services workers.
The shadow chancellor said it was not an “exclusive” list, telling the Financial Times: “We would look to improve our trading relationship with Europe.
Sir Keir said a defence and security pact with the EU is “really important to us”.
“I do think there is scope for a significant improvement of our defence and security relationship with the EU,” he added.
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“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.”
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