British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will barely get his feet under the desk at 10 Downing Street before flying to Washington next week to attend a NATO summit. A week later, he will host 50 European leaders for a security meeting at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
It’s a crash course in global statesmanship for Starmer, Britain’s first Labour prime minister in 14 years. But it also gives him a chance to project an image of Britain unusual in the post-Brexit era: a stable, conventional, center-left country amid a seething tide of politically troubled allies.
In Washington, Starmer will meet President Joe Biden, who is resisting calls to abandon his re-election race because of age-related decline. He will meet President Emmanuel Macron, whose attempt to fend off the far right in France appears to have backfired, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose coalition has been weakened by the far right’s rise in European Parliament elections.
