Starmer courts EU peers in hopes of easing Brexit pain

Anybody watching Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron walking and talking together yesterday could not fail to be struck by the warmth of the body language between the two. It was an enormous contrast to the way the French president viewed Britain's past four prime ministers.

- DAVID MADDOX

Certainly, the UK and France have come a long way from the days when Liz Truss told a Tory leadership hustings that the “jury is out” on whether Macron was a friend or foe of Britain just before entering No 10 – albeit for a mere 49 days.

And we should not be surprised that Starmer and Macron are much closer. They are political allies on the centre-left, both have had to see off the far left and both have a problem with the populist right. Starmer, after all, led the efforts to reverse the Brexit referendum result and is clearly much more pro-EU than any of the last Tory PMs.

But if relations are very good with Macron it is as nothing compared to the brotherly love-in that Starmer is enjoying with German chancellor Olaf Scholz. The two men have already met five times and the UK prime minister has barely been in office for two weeks.

It is clear that Starmer hopes he can use these two key relationships to help reverse the harms and effects of Brexit without officially reversing Brexit itself. And he has good reason to feel optimistic about that strategy – but a lesson he could draw from Lord David Cameron and Theresa May is that Berlin and Paris often provide false hope for defeating the forces of populist nationalism at home.