Keir Starmer used his press conference at the end of the European Political Community summit to further cement his narrative that the Tories have broken everything and that the situation is much worse than he had thought before entering government. This line is, Labour strategists believe, essential to the party having a chance of securing a second term, much as the Tories won the 2015 election with their campaigning in their first few months of governing in 2010. He accused the previous government of a ‘dereliction of duty’ on immigration, saying: ‘We’ve had a Home Office who has been dedicated to a gimmick that didn’t work.’
The argument about the Conservatives messing everything up is also essential for buying time while Starmer tries to get his head around how to stop the boats. He was challenged on this yesterday by Rishi Sunak, who said he needed to come up with an alternative to the Rwanda plan – the policy Starmer today described as a ‘gimmick’. Asked when he expected to make progress on the small boats crisis, the Prime Minister said: ‘We can’t switch that in 24 hours, one week – two weeks ago today we were still knocking on doors asking people to vote for us. We’ve been left in a really difficult position yet again by this government, which has been a dereliction of duty.’
The Prime Minister tried to argue that he was already fixing the mess, telling the press conference that ‘we are going to deepen our cooperation on defence and security and on illegal migration, where we are resetting our approach’. He announced £84 in humanitarian projects in African countries and the Middle East to help tackle illegal migration ‘at source’. He closed his statement by saying: ‘I’m proud to leave this summit with stronger relationships across Europe and to leave the EPC in a stronger position as well.’ Katy explained earlier that Starmer wants his ‘reset’ to go much further, including greater alignment and removing trade barriers while not technically rejoining the single market or customs union. That’ll be much harder to win over the EU on. In his question and answer session with journalists, he said: ‘We do want to get a better deal than the deal that we’ve got at the moment. We understand the challenge and constraints of any discussion, of course we do. But I do think there’s a closer relationship to be had, that includes trade, that includes education and research, and includes security.’
Today’s summit was a much easier event than any of the ones that will follows: many other European leaders are embattled and flocking around anyone who has visible power, like Starmer does at the moment. President Macron said the new UK PM was bringing ‘new momentum’ to tackling political problems. At some point, though, Starmer will have to start asking for more difficult things from his European counterparts – and will have to start answering questions on whether his government is really making any less of a mess on migration.
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