Starmer’s diplomacy earns global respect, but not at home

Fore! Donald Trump will be visiting his golf courses in Scotland later in the month and Sir Keir Starmer will fly north to meet the US president. A London-based foreign diplomat wondered of me: “Has the prime minister been practising his swing?” I replied that he has no known interest in golf. I could have added that he turned down the honorary membership offered to all prime ministers by the club nearest to Chequers. But who knows? Given his dedication to nurturing relations with other leaders, the US president above all, maybe Sir Keir will use the impending parliamentary recess to head down to the driving range.

The time he has devoted to international relations and the relative success of his efforts has been a double surprise to Starmer-watchers. Given the groaning plate of domestic challenges he inherited, he came to power expecting to be primarily focussed on the home front. Yet people in a position to know reckon he’s spending roughly 50% of his working hours on international business. His calm and collected approach to crises has won plaudits even from political opponents. There’s a bittersweet feeling among colleagues that their leader has been more deft at representing Britain to the world than he has been at advocating for himself to Britons.

His avowed intent is to stay close to America while building partnerships in Europe. He has so far walked that tricky tightrope without falling off, by sustaining an odd-couple dynamic with the infamously thin-skinned US president while making relations with our closest neighbours the warmest than at any time in the nine years since the Brexit referendum. The recent visit by Friedrich Mertz, the German chancellor, put signatures on a friendship treaty with military cooperation at its core. The week before, Emmanuel Macron was in town for the full bells-and-whistles pageantry of a state visit during which the French president urged the two countries to stand “shoulder to shoulder” against threats to democracy and international law.

The size of Labour’s parliamentary majority helps. Recent experience has shown that it is no protection against backbench revolt, but it tells his international peer group that Sir Keir is very likely to be in post for at least another three to four years. That makes it worth investing in a relationship with him.

His personality is another advantage. What colleagues regard as flaws in the domestic arena can be virtues on the international stage. At home, he is accused of lacking an ideological lodestar and has frequently suggested that there will never be anything worthy of the label “Starmerism”. Unflashy pragmatism and lawyerly focus on detail may be a disappointment to those Labour people who yearn for more of “the vision thing”, but these attributes are assets when dealing with his variegated international peer group. As leaders go, he doesn’t carry bags of ego and doesn’t have a compulsion to show off, which helps when dealing with Macron and Trump, both competitive grandstanders.

“He’s established a rapport with people you wouldn’t expect,” remarks one minister. No two humans on the planet could be less alike than the UK prime minister and the US president. Exactly why Trump genuinely seems to like the prime minister is a bit baffling to Sir Keir himself. It probably helps that he’s not easily riled. Also, he’s not quick to take offence and is careful not to give it. Those who have observed his private interactions with other leaders report that the prime minister is astute about when to speak and when it is smarter to be listening.