Why isolated Starmer will struggle to find allies in a Right-wing world

When Rishi Sunak chose Blenheim Palace as the venue for last week’s European Political Community (EPC) summit, he had no idea he was about to do Sir Keir Starmer a huge favour.

The splendour of our finest stately home was the perfect location to soothe the fears of Right-wing populists like Georgia Meloni and Viktor Orban that Britain is lurching too far to the Left. After all, what could be further away from Sir Keir’s Trotskyist beginnings than standing with the King at the birthplace of Winston Churchill?

The 46 leaders who assembled in Oxfordshire had expected Mr Sunak to be prime minister when they received their invitations, but his disastrous decision to call an early election meant it was Sir Keir who stood waiting to greet them.

The meeting, just a fortnight after the Labour leader had been elected, was a useful head start in building relationships with counterparts who do not share his political outlook, and he claimed that by the end of the summit he had built “stronger relationships across Europe”.

But he has much more work to do if he is to win over Europe’s influential populists, let alone Donald Trump should he return to the White House. To be successful, he will need the help of Cameron-era diplomats, Boris Johnson appointees and, quite possibly, Nigel Farage.

Sir Julian King, the former British ambassador to France and to Ireland, said: “If two leaders are from different political families then there will be fewer party links between them and, in that case, it is more likely to be down to the ambassador to map out what common ground there is between them.

“It is their job to introduce ministers to decision-makers and if you have been doing your job properly in advance as an ambassador, you will have links with the parties in government, including backroom people.”

Ms Meloni, the Italian prime minister, had a genuine personal rapport with Mr Sunak that Sir Keir is unlikely to replicate. Worse still, her foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, is “no Anglophile” according to political analysts in Rome, who pointed out that – as a former president of the European Parliament – he is as pro-EU as they come, which means he is no fan of Brexit.

That makes Sir Keir highly reliant on Lord Llewellyn, the British ambassador to Italy, who spent 11 years as Lord Cameron’s chief of staff and is as close as almost anyone to the former Conservative prime minister.

Luckily for Sir Keir, Lord Llewellyn, who has been in post since 2022, also gets on famously with Ms Meloni, and the two message each other directly, rather than communicating via their staff.

Sir Keir’s man in Rome is a hugely experienced diplomat who has worked in Hong Kong, Sarajevo and Brussels in the past, and will be a huge asset in building bridges with the world’s ninth-largest economy.

Ms Meloni has good reason to build a relationship with Sir Keir: the UK and Italy recently signed the Global Combat Air Programme, together with third partner Japan, to produce a next generation fighter jet. Sir Keir has ordered a review of defence strategy and spending, meaning Ms Meloni needs to persuade him to remain committed to the levels of spending agreed by Mr Sunak, which is not yet guaranteed.

After the EPC summit, Ms Meloni told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera: “With Sunak I had a particularly harmonious relationship, a personal friendship even, but a new phase has begun. The ideological dimension [with Labour] won’t stop us from coming together on issues that are of reciprocal national interest.”

Another of those who attended the EPC summit at Blenheim Palace was Mr Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, who has held “peace” meetings with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump over the war in Ukraine and has also met Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, to the annoyance of Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

He told journalists at the EPC that when he meets Putin or Xi: “I represent myself. That’s called political leadership.” Asked how he could do more to tackle the issue of immigration, he said: “Don’t let them in.” He also said a Trump presidency would be “the best news I can imagine.”

Sir Keir could, then, face a tricky few days in November, when he will travel to the next EPC summit in Budapest, hosted by Mr Orban, just two days after the US presidential election. Mr Trump could well be president elect by then.

Diplomatic sources said work had yet to begin in earnest on building up the relationship between Labour and Mr Orban, and the Hungarian leader himself said the time he had spent with Sir Keir, meeting him briefly at the final of Euro 2024 and at the EPC, was “not enough to make any evaluation”.

Craig Mackinlay, the former Conservative MP who is soon to join the House of Lords, is the chairman of Parliament’s all-party group on Hungary, as well as being married to a Hungarian. He says Sir Keir has a useful go-between in London – if he is prepared to stand up to his own party.

“Labour’s Left-wing principles mean they would rather deal with the devil than deal with Orban,” he said, “but they are playing the real game now. Orban is an enigmatic character, but his ambassador to the UK, Ferenc Kumin, is a very active diplomat and is a real Anglophile. He will be key, partly because the British ambassador in Budapest is just being changed.”

The most difficult circle to square will come about if Donald Trump is re-elected as US president in November.

Last week JD Vance, Mr Trump’s running mate, joked that Britain could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” now that Labour is in power. In turn, several members of the Cabinet have made disparaging comments about Mr Trump in the past.

David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, has previously described Mr Trump as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and ”no friend of Britain”.

Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, said after the Capitol riots in 2021 that “the violence that Donald Trump has unleashed is terrifying”, while Sir Keir said Mr Trump “has to take responsibility” for the riot.

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, joined a march in 2017 to “take a stand against Donald Trump”. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, has called Mr Trump an “absolute moron” and a “racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper”.

Mr Lammy was rather more diplomatic when he said last week: “I meet with Republicans and Democrats, many close to Trump, and we will work with whomever the United States chooses to put in the White House.” He has even called himself a “small-c conservative” for the sake of US audiences.

He would not, however, go as far as withdrawing his comments about Mr Trump, saying: “You are going to struggle to find any politician who didn’t have things to say about Donald Trump back in the day.”

For his part, Sir Keir has said it is “for the American people” to choose who leads them, and said he was “appalled” by the assassination attempt on Mr Trump.

But Sir Keir will be hugely reliant on Dame Karen Pierce, sent to Washington by Boris Johnson, to repair the damage if Mr Trump returns to the White House.

She began her current role when Mr Trump was still president and has been the eyes and ears in the US capital of the last three prime ministers. It was Ms Pierce who was responsible for organising the phone call between Mr Trump and Sir Keir after the assassination attempt on the former president, and also Lord Cameron’s dinner with Mr Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in April.

Last week, she and some of her staff attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, strengthening their links with Mr Trump’s team, and in particular Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the co-chairmen of the Trump presidential campaign.

Mr Lammy has his own separate team led by his political adviser Ben Judah, who has spent the past four years working as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington DC and making contacts on Capitol Hill.

Mr Lammy, who is friends with Barack Obama and attended Harvard University, has been keen to play up his pre-election contacts with both Joe Biden’s team and Trump’s staff, saying he had found common ground in meetings with Mr Vance because they were both working-class Christians with addiction issues in their families.

He has also held meetings with Elbridge Colby, a Trump-era Pentagon official, and Mr Trump’s former national security duo Robert O’Brien and Matt Pottinger. His team has held briefings on the Labour Party’s foreign policy with more than 20 Republican congressional offices.

Britain is sometimes described as a bridge between the US and Europe on Nato, and John Healey, the highly experienced Defence Secretary, will be arguably more in demand by any future Trump regime than Mr Lammy.

Mr Trump, though, is known to bear grudges, meaning that Sir Keir and his ministers may still be a long way off cordial relations with him. There is, of course, a break-glass-in-emergency option for Sir Keir if Mr Trump gives him the cold shoulder: Nigel Farage.

The Reform UK leader, who attended the Republican National Congress to support his great friend Mr Trump, told The Telegraph recently that he would not get in Sir Keir’s way on US-UK relations because “our relationship with America even under a Labour government is very, very important, so I won’t try to cause any friction in the middle of that at all, quite the opposite”.

What would Mr Farage do if Sir Keir asked him to put in a good word for him with Mr Trump? “If I can be helpful with that relationship I will be,” he said, “because it really matters.”