European Parliament President Roberta Metsola used an address to the Spanish senate on Tuesday to call for closer ties with the U.K. as London steps up efforts to secure smoother access to European markets and funding projects, after the country voted to leave the bloc in 2016.

“Ten years on from Brexit … and in a world that has changed so profoundly, Europe and the U.K. need a new way of working together on trade, customs, research, mobility and on security and defense,” Metsola said. “Today it is time to exorcize the ghosts of the past.”

Metsola called for a “reset” in the partnership between Britain and the EU as part of a policy of “realistic pragmatism anchored in values that will see all of us move forward together.”

Her speech comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he intended to try and ensure his country’s defense industries can benefit from the EU’s flagship SAFE scheme — a €150 billion funding program designed to boost procurement of military hardware.

That push has been far from smooth, with a meeting of EU governments on Monday night failing to sign off U.K. access to SAFE, despite France — which has consistently opposed non-EU countries taking part — supporting the British inclusion.

Starmer has also signaled in recent days that he is seeking closer integration with the EU’s single market. Brussels has so far been reluctant to reopen the terms of the U.K.’s relations with the bloc just six years after it exited.

While those decisions lie with the remaining 27 EU member countries, rather than the Parliament, Metsola’s intervention marks a shift in tone that could bolster the British case for closer relations. In the context of increasingly tense relations with the U.S., capitals are depending on cooperation with British intelligence and military capabilities and in key industries.

Europe must take “the next steps towards a stronger European defense, boosting our capabilities and cooperation, and working closely with our NATO allies so that Europe can better protect its people,” Metsola said.

At a speech in central London, Keir Starmer said Brexit had “significantly hurt our economy,” warning “frictions” with the bloc must be reduced to enable “economic renewal” in the U.K.

It comes days after talks between London and Brussels to allow Britain to participate in the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe loans-for-weapons program broke down, amid a disagreement over how much the U.K. would have to pay to participate.

In his Monday morning speech, Starmer gave a staunch defense of last week’s budget, insisting he does have a long-term economic plan for the U.K.

“The most important things that we can do for growth and business is first, drive inflation down and second, to retain market confidence that allows for recall economic stability,” he said.

But the U.K. must “confront the reality” that the deal struck with Brussels post-Brexit “significantly hurt our economy, he said.

“For economic renewal we have to keep reducing frictions. We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU, and we have to be grown-up about that, to accept that that will require trade-offs.”

He later cited a proposed SPS deal, which aims to remove the need for border checks on plant and animal products, and talks on an emission trading scheme as examples of where the U.K. is making progress.

Starmer’s speech came as the embattled British prime minister tried to defend last week’s tax-hiking government budget.

He insisted the choices made the tax-and-spend statement had been “fair, necessary and fundamentally good for growth,” but acknowledged publicly for the first time that ministers had considered — and then backed away from — a manifesto-busting rise in the headline rate of income tax.

Westminster is braced for the impact of the government’s latest “strategic defense review” — a major piece of work attempting to identify the biggest threats facing the U.K. and how to meet them. 

The report is expected to devote more than £1 billion to technology for quicker strategic decisions, as well as distilling the military lessons of the war in Ukraine.

But when it comes to defining Britain’s place in the world, the task for the review’s authors — led by former NATO Secretary-General and Labour peer George Robertson — is a far harder one.

The review will have to address the implications of Donald Trump’s message that he wants to pull back from the United States’ role in defending Europe — an uncomfortable shift in a relationship long seen as a cornerstone of British security. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Defence Secretary John Healey and the wider British military establishment have consistently sought to emphasize the strength of the transatlantic partnership under Trump, refusing to engage with suggestions that the U.K.’s security calculation might be changing.

But some members of parliament and analysts are already warning this represents a dangerous blind spot for the U.K. government, which there seems to be little appetite to address.

“I’m afraid the top brass never went to see ‘Love Actually,’” said Nick Witney, former head of the European Defence Agency — a reference to the 2003 rom-com where a U.K. prime minister stands up to the U.S. president. 

The dilemma

While reviews of recent years dwelt on “Global Britain” and the “Indo-Pacific tilt,” the latest version was always likely to see a sharp swerve back toward Europe, necessitated by the harsh reality of war in Ukraine. 

Starmer’s government acknowledged this from the outset, stating that the review should take a “NATO first” approach. 

Yet the sands have shifted again since the SDR was launched last summer, with the return of Trump and his pivot away from protecting Europe.

Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, argues this will mean a reevaluation of the priority given to the U.K.’s European alliances “in order to hedge against the probability of at least some American withdrawal, and the possibility of something much more radical.”

To make matters harder, it’s difficult to judge just how far Trump will resile from the United States’ traditional burdens — from a slight shift in the orthodoxy to a radical change of focus, for example toward containing Iran.

Patrick Porter, professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, said: “Whatever it is, it’s significantly different from what we had for generations. You would have had this even without Trump, but he has accelerated things.”

At least one of the SDR’s authors seems well placed to assess the threat from Trump’s change of direction. Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the president on Russia, recently warned of “a genuine rupture in the relationship between the U.S. and its allies.”

Nonetheless, Porter predicted: “I think what you’re going to get is a very untidy mix of recognizing changed circumstances while clinging on to the old world order.” 

What are the pinch points?

The U.K. is heavily reliant on the U.S. for several key aspects of its defense network, including intelligence-sharing, the nuclear deterrent and F-35 fighter planes.

Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former army officer, called for a rethink of the intelligence the U.K. shares with America in the wake of the Signalgate scandal, saying: “When you share intelligence you obviously want to know if these people are trustworthy.”

A second MP working on defense matters, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that when it comes to reducing Britain’s dependence on the U.S., “we should be asking ourselves, publicly and privately, what does that look like.”

That view is seldom reflected, even in private, by ministers or officials, as they stick religiously to the line that there is nothing contradictory in the U.K. and U.S.’s calculations about their own defense.

U.K. Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson argued in a speech last week that Trump “is doing Europe a favor by confronting us” with the notion that “we must become less dependent on America while remaining inseparably linked to America.”

There seems to be little signal that Britain’s public assessment of its relationship with America will change as it tries desperately to keep Trump in the room for peace talks on Ukraine.

Future risks

Trump’s cooling on U.S. involvement in Europe presents an additional strategic risk for NATO allies.

Witney, currently a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said there is a lack of direction when it comes to identifying where Western countries need to beef up key capabilities.

“With the Americans having one foot out of the door, everybody is saying ‘we must take more responsibility’ but there just is no forum,” he argued. “It’s very hard to see where the sensible, collaborative, pooled efforts can come from if we haven’t even got a way of working out together where our priorities lie.”

While a host of European countries including the U.K. have announced a boost to defense spending, it may be easier to raise the overall envelope than to take coordinated decisions on where to actually direct it.

Joint initiatives have been in short supply beyond the European Long-Range Strike Approach — and U.K. access to an EU defense fund is out of reach for now.

If this remains the case, the U.K. and its continental allies may struggle to meet the challenge that underpins the entire SDR: how to protect against Russian aggression in a world where America is moving on.

The British prime minister used Monday’s EU-U.K. Brexit summit to offer major concessions on EU access to U.K. fishing waters — in exchange for a host of favorable terms he’s betting tired voters will thank him for.

Ahead of the gathering at London’s swish Lancaster House — billed as hitting reset on years of post-Brexit bad blood — Brussels was widely thought to be seeking a 10-year extension to the generous fishing rights its fleets already enjoy in U.K. waters under Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

London offered up four. And in the end, they settled on 12.

The giveaway, pounced on by critics, is a political gamble for Starmer, who appears to be trading a hit to a relatively small by symbolic part of the U.K. economy for wins elsewhere.

The decision immediately gave euroskeptics like Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage and embattled Tory chief Kemi Badenoch a clear line of attack.

Farage declared the agreement “the end of the fishing industry” while Badenoch branded it a “sell-out.” Euroskeptic parts of the British press are already following their lead, and even Johnson himself re-emerged to rubbish it in colorful terms.

While downplaying the idea that fishing communities will be severely hit, and offering up both some fresh investment and an easing of food checks as a sweetener, Starmer is hoping his wins in other policy areas will catch Brits’ attention.

In getting the green light for a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement and re-entry into the internal electricity market, the U.K. has effectively been allowed to break one of Brussels’ cardinal Brexit rules: no “cherry-picking.”

Sure, London has sign up to EU rules and listen to European Court of Justice judgments on those topics.

But Brussels has until now been very clear that sector-by-sector participation in parts of the single market was not on the table. Several million tons of fish clearly helped change their minds.

Transparent re-brand

The fish probably also appear to have helped get the deal over the line without too much fuss on another tricky area for Starmer: youth mobility.

At various points in the last year Brussels has looked ready to sink the reset entirely over visas allowing young people to live and work in the U.K. and vice versa, which it regards as a priority.

Starmer long said he had no plans to agree any such scheme — fearing it smelled too much like EU free movement and was politically difficult. In recent weeks he has softened his stance to get the wider deal over the line.

But while the policy, transparently rebranded as a “youth experience” scheme, is in the negotiating roadmap agreed at the summit, the wording is somewhat minimalist and various parts of the EU’s original plan are missing.

The agreed text states that the scheme will be time-limited and “on terms to be mutually agreed”. There is no mention of lower tuition fees or how long the time-limit would be. One EU diplomat described the policy as a “work-in-progress.”

Starmer insisted at his press conference closing the summit that the youth scheme would have a cap on numbers. In fact, the agreement only says that both sides will “ensure that the overall number of participants is acceptable to both sides,” which is a little different.

There are some other devils in the detail, too. At the same media briefing, Starmer made a big deal about Brits being allowed to use EU passport gates.

In reality, it’ll be up to individual EU member states to decide that. Some have shown no inclination to fill their express lanes with holidaying Brits.

Looking ahead

Some of the more politically difficult negotiations have been kicked into the future, too.

Youth mobility need not have been so politically fraught for Starmer. The U.K. has signed similar arrangements with a dozen countries from Uruguay to Japan without incident. In reality it is just a visa and nothing like freedom of movement.

But in ruling it out for so long and agonizing about its political meaning, Downing Street has arguably made the scheme a flashpoint. This was always a curious choice when Brussels was so insistent on the policy — and it may come back to bite them. Farage will certainly be gnashing its teeth when the details are agreed.

There are other tricky topics ahead, too.

The agreement, Erasmus+ association, and British participation in EU’s SAFE defense fund all sound relatively unconventional. But all are likely to require the British government to open its wallet and make financial contributions — which collectively could prompt accusations of another “sell-out.”

For now though, Starmer can enjoy his cherry-picking — and Brussels can enjoy its fish.

In an interview with POLITICO ahead of next week’s much-hyped EU-U.K. reset summit, Richard Tice rubbished the idea of greater youth mobility between the bloc and the U.K. — and warned of a “sell out” of British interests by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

The comments come as Reform UK, led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, tries to turn up the heat on Starmer over migration after coming top in local elections.

“I want there to be a labor shortage, because that’s the way to getting productivity improvements,” Tice said. “That’s the way to get wage growth for the least well-off and that’s the way to get millions of people off benefits and back into work.”

For Tice, any youth mobility deal — a key EU objective in upcoming talks — would open “a backdoor to the freedom of movement.” Britain’s Labour government has repeatedly stressed that a return to European free movement post-Brexit is a red line in any talks with Brussels. Mindful of being accused of unpicking Brexit, it has similarly ruled out pushing a return to the customs union or single market.

But Tice said of youth mobility: “You will have lots of young people from Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania, pouring into the U.K. and then finding reasons to stay here or overstay their visas. This is the thin end of opening to [EU] freedom of movement.” 

Despite concerns that Britain could face acute labor shortages in sectors like healthcare and hospitality, Tice called his approach “carrot and stick” — arguing that worker shortages would force wages up and thereby encourage more participation in the workforce. 

“We want a world leading-benefit system,” he said. “But if you think you can make a lifestyle choice to sit on your backside and watch telly all day, forget it.” 

No deal until boats stop

Elsewhere in his interview, the deputy Reform boss dismissed the idea of reopening negotiations with Brussels entirely until France “carries out their legal obligation” to stop small boats carrying irregular migrants across the English Channel. 

Britain signed an agreement with France in February to toughen up action on illegal migrant crossings, but Tice said of the summit: “There’s nothing to talk about until France carry out their legal obligation to pick up the boats and take them back to France. When they do that, we can talk about stuff. Until they do that, forget it.”

The summit arrives at a politically-charged moment for Starmer, who is facing domestic pressure to curb both legal and illegal immigration. The government recently unveiled a crackdown on overseas recruitment and graduate visas, just days after voters turned to Reform UK in the local elections. 

Reform, however, spies an opportunity in public anger about immigration. 

“I don’t think this place has any idea about their fury and rage,” he said. “With these local elections — be under no illusion — no one was talking about potholes or bins. All they were talking about on every door was immigration.”

Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said it would be a “mistake” for Britain’s prime minister — who has spent the week talking tough on migration — to draw a red line on increased worker mobility with the bloc.

The comments by the TUC boss — whose organization acts as an umbrella body for U.K. labor unions — come ahead of Starmer’s much-hyped “reset” meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, set for Monday May 19 in the U.K.

“I think it would be a mistake to rule out anything,” Nowak said of the summit.

He added: “We want to see increased mobility for specific groups of workers. So, for example, touring musicians. There has been a big bump in our musicians’ union about the restrictions, the additional costs placed on touring musicians [since Brexit].

“But for younger workers as well, I would like to see a youth mobility scheme. And for workers, just generally, I want to see increased opportunities for workers in the U.K. to work in the EU and vice versa.”

Starmer has taken a publicly harder line on immigration after Labour emerged bruised by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, which surged in local elections at the start of the month.

The prime minister unveiled a crackdown this week, curbing the recruitment of foreign social care workers and vowing immigration will fall “significantly” by the end of this parliament.

But “people-to-people contacts, including migration and youth mobility” are on the EU’s agenda for post-Brexit reset talks with Starmer, the European Council confirmed this week.

Starmer may have clamped down on foreign workers in the healthcare sector, but Britain is “going to need people to work in social care from the EU and beyond in the U.K.,” Nowak said, as he also urged a focus on domestic training and up-skilling for sectors hit by shortages.

“Now that will include, if you’ve got a growing economy, people having the ability to come and work in the U.K.”

Customs union warning

Nowak — who moved into the top job in the union body back in 2022 — also warned Starmer against ruling out joining a customs union with the EU as part of his Brexit reset.

“We’re wanting the government to look at every option on the table, up to and including the customs union,” he said. “What we’re interested in is what’s best for good quality jobs in the U.K. and what’s going to keep our members in employment. So I think it would be a mistake to take anything off the table.”

Starmer has made staying out of a customs union one of his Brexit “red lines” — along with membership of the EU’s single market and a return to freedom of movement. 

Nowak argued “things have moved on since the referendum and the sort of immediate post referendum era” — when Starmer set those lines for fear of being accused of betraying the will of the people.

 “When you look at the impact that Brexit had on the U.K. economy, [which was] four to five percent of GDP, I think for our members working with some of those key sectors, they’re not hung up on what’s the form of language or the exact mechanism,” he said.

“What they want is the ability for their companies to minimize the friction in their supply chains, to be able to bring in goods, the goods that go backwards and forwards between the U.K. and EU. So I think, from our point of view, [we’re] challenging the government to be ambitious, to consider every option.”

A British government spokesperson said: “We will always act in Britain’s national interest. We have been clear there will be no return to freedom of movement, the customs union or the single market.”

In his wide-ranging interview, Nowak also had words for the EU side and how it might make the whole exercise a bit easier. “There’s a lot of skepticism, I think, in Europe, about the U.K. getting special treatment. All of that psychodrama they went through with the previous [Conservative] government. Can you trust them?” he told POLITICO.

“We’ve got to encourage our colleagues in Europe to be as ambitious as well and not just to see the review of the TCA [trade and cooperation agreement] as a technical exercise.”

Macron’s office said that the trip, which will also include a summit between the French leader and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, will take place from July 8 to 10. Such meetings used to be an annual ritual, but were suspended during the acrimonious Brexit negotiations.

The Elysée Palace said in a statement that the visit “will show the depth of the ties that unite our two countries and our two people.”

With the war raging in Ukraine and European security a concern amid threats from Russia, it’s expected the summit will focus on defense and security, an area where the French and the British have in the past worked together closely.

Ties between France and the United Kingdom have improved since the frosty days of tense Brexit negotiations, which concluded with a deal in 2020. Starmer’s effort to reset relations with the bloc have helped further thaw London’s relationships with both Brussels and Paris.

The visit will also be an opportunity to address some thorny issues that divide the two countries. France has been playing hardball on reset talks between the EU and the U.K. — Paris wants London to commit to extending fishing rights for EU trawlers in British waters beyond a looming deadline next year.

From defense to fisheries, France’s diplomats have been playing hardball, according to officials from both sides. So while governments are optimistic that Britain and Europe can rekindle some kind of relationship in the wake of Donald Trump’s less-than-subtle attempt to turn his back on them, it’s certainly not turning out to be a painless process.

Just as Paris played bad cop during the negotiations over the U.K.’s withdrawal from the EU and subsequent trade deal between 2016 and 2020, it’s putting in a repeat performance now the Brits want to get closer again, with a crucial London summit less than two weeks away.

“The French have stayed very much on the position that there shouldn’t be any advantages given to the British after Brexit,” said François-Joseph Schichan, a former French diplomat and director at advisory firm Flint Global.  

In fact, some of the same issues that caused such a headache for the two sides during the divorce are rearing their heads again, according to diplomats from both sides who, like others quoted in this piece, were granted anonymity to speak frankly about talks behind closed doors.

France, for example, wants to limit British access to a €150 billion European rearmament defense fund that is being negotiated. It also wants to secure access to British waters for EU fishing fleets ahead of a deadline next year.

In Paris, French officials are optimistic that their lobbying will pay off on the arms purchasing issue, but they remain tight-lipped regarding any fisheries deal.

Farage looms large

European and British negotiators have this week been locked in another round of intensive talks to strike a three-part pact that includes a political declaration, a defense pact and a third section on other areas of cooperation. A landmark summit between the two sides is planned for London on May 19. 

In the last few months, the warming relations have seen Starmer hosting and being invited to leader-level discussions on Ukraine and U.K. ministers participating in EU meetings. The most recent of these was Wednesday’s gathering of EU foreign ministers in Poland attended by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

“We are working hand-in-hand with our European allies to build a safer, more secure, and more prosperous Europe,” Lammy said.

But a lot can still go wrong, not least because Starmer is under increased pressure following big wins by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in local elections last week. Farage was one of the most vocal supporters of Brexit and is railing against any government attempt to push the U.K. back into the European fold.

With uncertainty hovering over the future of the NATO alliance under Trump, and Washington threatening to walk away from difficult ceasefire negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, European officials want to land a security deal with the U.K., an allied nuclear power that has a seat on the United Nations Security Council. 

In Paris, however, the urgency to lock arms with the British is tempered by a desire to use the moment to address the bad blood left over from Brexit.

The French are keen in principle on a security alliance with the U.K., but are worried that a bigger deal leaves them open to being blindsided later on more controversial issues, such as access to British waters for EU trawlers.

Under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, signed in 2020, European fleets have certain fishing rights and quotas in British waters, but those expire in 2026. France, Denmark and the Netherlands want that access extended. 

And while Paris doesn’t want to trade guns for fish, it’s clear France is pushing to secure fishing rights as a prerequisite to a closer defense partnership. 

“You can’t negotiate security [and] defense one year, and the next year be fighting over mackerel quotas,” a French official said.

French isolation

The defense dispute boils down to money. The U.K. wants its firms to benefit from SAFE, the multibillion-euro rearmament program that is currently being negotiated by EU members, but France sees that effort as unwelcome competition from London and a case of the Brits trying to have their post-Brexit cake and eat it too.

Some EU member countries such as Germany and those in Eastern Europe under greater threat from Russia have bristled at what they regard as French intransigence. One non-French EU diplomat said that France had started “to feel isolated” as it resisted making SAFE more accessible to the British.

The mood in France is currently trending toward “including the British, but with strict conditions.” One option being floated is making the U.K. a fee-paying participant in SAFE, according to an official from Renew Europe, which includes French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists.

“I think the French reluctance on this issue was more an initial negotiating position, because the French defense industry doesn’t want rivals, and there’ll be an impact on jobs locally,” the official said.

Old habits die hard 

The disagreement boils down to a difference in post-Brexit mindsets between Paris and London.

Britain still sees Brussels as a close partner despite leaving the EU, but French confidence in the U.K. remains shaken. And while Britain believes the “special relationship” with the U.S. is salvageable, Europe has come to terms with its breakup with America under Trump.

That, and British efforts to secure a trade deal with Washington, have reinforced the French view that the reset with Starmer will be relatively limited and that the U.K. doesn’t see its future as lying exclusively with the continent.

In the end, France’s role in the reset might come down to a cold political calculus. Macron needs Starmer if he hopes to achieve anything on Ukraine, and foreign policy is one of the few areas that can burnish his public image amid France’s domestic political gridlock.

“If France and the U.K don’t work together, nothing will happen,” said Schichan, the former diplomat. “If Macron wants results, he needs to be aligned [with London].”

Gregorio Sorgi and Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.

The U.K. government beefed up its marine environmental protections after leaving the EU — enraging continental fishermen and prompting a legal challenge last year.

But the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Friday ruled that the U.K.’s ban was based on the best available science and did not discriminate against EU fishers.

However, it also ruled that the U.K. had made a procedural error in bringing in the ban by not giving due regard to the rights of EU fishers during an adjustment period — as required under the Brexit trade deal.

The fish are fed to livestock by farmers in countries like Denmark, but are also the favored food of baby seabirds.

Conservationists have long pushed for the ban on fishing the stock in a bid to give the endangered birds a break — and a chance at arresting their falling numbers.

A U.K. government spokesperson said the judgment “does not mean the U.K. is legally obliged to reverse the closure” and that it would now “undertake a process in good faith to bring the U.K. into compliance on the specific issues raised by the Tribunal.”

“We remain committed to protecting our seabirds and the wider marine environment, in accordance with our commitments to the TCA [the U.K.-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement] and other international agreements,” they added.

A European Commission spokesperson told reporters on Friday afternoon that the bloc’s executive was “still analyzing this ruling.”

Beccy Speight, the chief executive of Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said she was “absolutely delighted the panel has found the ecological case for the closure of industrial sand eel fishing is sound.”

“We now expect the U.K. government and the EU to move forward and make this closure permanent. Safeguarding sand eel stocks is a key part of the jigsaw that will help set our puffins, kittiwakes and the wider marine environment on the path to recovery.”

Ben Reynolds, director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy think tank, said the judgment was “welcome news for the environment,” adding that the case was “one of only a handful of issues where the U.K. has used its post-Brexit powers to go further than the EU on tightening up protection of the environment.”

The judgment comes as EU and U.K. negotiators are locked in talks about how to improve the post-Brexit cross-Channel relationship. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will host EU chiefs in London on May 19 to confirm progress.

The two leaders will meet on Thursday, according to von der Leyen’s official schedule, and the European Commission president will also attend a London summit on the future of energy security, co-hosted by the U.K. government and the International Energy Agency.

Energy has become a key target for deeper post-Brexit cooperation between the U.K. and the EU. At a separate summit in May the two sides are expected to discuss the topic alongside defense, security, and fisheries.

U.K. ministers view next week’s two-day summit as an opportunity to showcase the Labour government’s commitment to its net zero climate goal, and its belief that phasing out fossil fuels and investing in renewables like wind and solar can forge a path to energy security.

Von der Leyen is the most senior guest so far confirmed to be attending.

The event, hosted by U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, will be attended by energy ministers from IEA member countries. That includes the U.S., which has taken a starkly different path on energy policy under Donald Trump, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and seeking to leverage its vast fossil fuel resources to secure trade concessions from the European Union.

The U.S. withdrawal from global climate efforts has also placed more emphasis on British and EU cooperation around the energy transition.

Von der Leyen’s visit also comes as the U.K. and the EU explore closer ties in electricity trading, with current post-Brexit arrangements due to expire in June 2026.

Energy companies on both sides of the channel say the current system is poor and want Brussels and London to agree to closer integration resembling the single market. Clean energy companies are also seeking alignment between the U.K. and the EU’s carbon emissions trading schemes and carbon border taxes.  

Reeves is in Warsaw, Poland, where EU finance ministers are meeting under the banner of Ecofin, organized by the Polish finance ministry. Poland currently holds the EU’s six-monthly rotating council presidency, so invited Reeves directly.

Against an unspoken backdrop of Donald Trump’s push away from Europe, Reeves will tell her counterparts that the U.K. and EU need to work together on defense funding to provide greater economic and national security.

They are likely to discuss the re-arming fund proposed by Brussels, which would see a €150 billion loan program for EU governments to spend on weapons and equipment. In order for the U.K. to be involved in the scheme, it needs a formal defense agreement with Brussels — something held up by a dispute about fishing quotas, among other issues.

POLITICO reported last week that the U.K. Treasury has pitched a plan that would allow participating governments to avoid booking the upfront capital cost of military kit in their national budget, which would be of huge benefit to countries with tight spending rules.

British officials met select European allies at a discreet dinner in Brussels a couple of weeks ago to discuss plans for the new defense fund. This gathering was also hosted by Poland.

“A strong economy needs a strong national defense. That is why the chancellor will be travelling to Warsaw to make the case for deeper defence financing cooperation with our European allies so together we deliver greater economic and national security in a changed world,” a Treasury official said in a statement accompanying the trip.

PM Keir Starmer recently upped Britain’s defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP, the biggest increase since the end of the Cold War.

The U.K. has spent the past few weeks pressing for a carve-out from Trump’s tariffs. Friday’s trip signals a renewed focus on the government’s pledge to reset U.K.-EU relations ahead of a wider summit May 19.

Recently, however, substantial cracks have begun to appear even there.

First, Trump ordered last month that American intelligence not be shared with Ukraine, either by its own spy agencies or by other countries in the Five Eyes security alliance. Then, U.S. national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to a conversation on the encrypted messaging app Signal that openly discussed American military action in Yemen, in an eye-opening insight into how lax current officials are with state secrets.

While Trump’s decision on intelligence-sharing with Ukraine was condemned by Kyiv’s allies around Europe, Britain did not retaliate, with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson stressing that Britain’s relationship with the U.S. “on defense, security and intelligence remains inextricably entwined.”

The links between Britain and America’s intelligence networks go so deep that it may be impossible to untangle them, or to replicate the U.S. contribution, according to current and former intelligence officials who have worked across the regions and were granted anonymity to speak candidly to POLITICO about areas of national security.

But the experts say that despite the intricate nature of the relationship, it may be necessary for Britain to begin planning for the previously unthinkable if Trump’s America continues to depart from its oldest alliances and once-shared international aims.

Eyes

Britain’s status as a comparative heavyweight in the intelligence sphere goes back decades, having been formalized in the establishment of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance of the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand following World War II. 

In the years since, the vast scale of joint operations and surveillance went largely unreported until NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked over 1.5 million classified documents in 2013 and unearthed the alliance’s work across the globe.

Five Eyes survived the leaks, but they revealed “a lot of the capabilities and access” of the alliance, changing the way intelligence was collected and how some tech companies behaved toward governments, according to one former senior U.K. intelligence official.

There has been a relative decline over the last few decades in the gathering of human intelligence — often referred to as HUMINT, which broadly covers agents and assets run by the FBI and CIA in the U.S. and MI5 and MI6 in the U.K. But that drop has been matched by a meteoric rise in its digital cousin, signals intelligence — named SIGINT, covered by the work of Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA.

The automated bulk sharing of this digital intelligence has become more important given that human intelligence “doesn’t scale in the same way,” the same former intelligence source said. “That is deeply, deeply integrated, and it’s deeply disruptive to disentangle that,” they added.

Ears

Britain still has important assets that are of use to America — chief among them its listening posts. These are military and intelligence facilities, often overseas, used to monitor communications. The details of listening posts are sometimes classified, with their locations, capabilities or which nations they monitor kept secret for national security reasons.

But the crucial data they collect makes it unlikely the U.S. would ever leave Five Eyes, according to Neil Melvin​​​​, director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense and security think tank. “For example, the one in Cyprus [Ayios Nikolaos] — the U.S. relies on that for the East Mediterranean, which is very important because of Israel,” he pointed out.

If the U.S. left the alliance, “they would also have to replace some very expensive assets that the U.K. has,” as well as U.S. signals and intelligence bases located in Britain, such as RAF Menwith Hill in Yorkshire — referred to by locals as “the golf balls.”

One figure in the U.K. intelligence community now working in the private sector said that listening posts are best understood as “hoovering up huge amounts of raw data” such as internet, telephone and radio traffic, and then “picking through it using machine learning or AI to pick up the signal from the noise” — such as key words, voices or addresses. “Only after that sifting does it really ever get in front of the eyes of a human being,” they added. 

A former U.K. government security official added that responsibilities for monitoring are shared by Britain and America, which means the intelligence is also shared. “One day or one week it will be the U.K.’s turn, the next time it will be the U.S.’s,” they said.

A separate former senior U.K. intelligence official who has worked closely with American counterparts noted that the signals intelligence community is particularly well integrated in Five Eyes. “Some are using U.S. equipment manned by Brits, some are the other way around; the same with Australia and Canada,” they said, adding: “You’ll find Americans working at GCHQ and Brits working in NSA.”

‘Someday, maybe they’re not our allies, right?’

Recent events have reminded U.S. allies that its intelligence capabilities can’t be matched. The U.S. intelligence-sharing ban for Ukraine had a material impact on its ability to fight Russia, most notably with its use of U.S. technology that needed American intelligence and input to properly function.

The Trump administration’s decision to suspend Ukraine’s access to commercial satellite imagery used by the U.S. government was a “quite worrying” development, according to the same former senior U.K. intelligence official, who added: “That should be a bit of a shock to the system, but everyone seems to have ignored it.”

While the U.K. can help analyze imagery the U.S. collects from space, it doesn’t have the capability to collect it itself, the official said. And any sharing from the U.S. “can, of course, also be turned on or turned off.”

Concerns about the implications of falling out of America’s good graces are echoed in long-running fears that it has the ability to hamper the effectiveness of the F-35 jets sold to allies, including the U.K., through some form of “kill switch.” Those fears were exacerbated by Trump’s comments when announcing the contract for America’s next-generation F-47 aircraft. When sold to allies, he said, the jet’s capabilities might be toned down by “about 10 percent,” as “someday, maybe they’re not our allies, right?” 

Downing Street was approached by POLITICO for comment.

Buying up Britain

Many of Britain’s security and defense innovations have been funded by the United States, providing support for the development of “dual-use” technology — with civilian and military applications — for America and its Five Eyes allies. 

“If the U.S. wants something of the U.K.’s invention these days, it simply buys it,” said one former British intelligence official, adding that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the U.S. government agency that helped push through technological advances like GPS and the Internet — funds and commissions U.K. universities directly.

In-Q-Tel, an American company that effectively operates as a venture capital firm for the CIA, has been an early-stage funder in at least 29 investments in various British tech and defense companies. Reportedly named after the spy gadgetmaster “Q” from James Bond, it aims to identify new commercial technology that could contribute to the national security of the U.S., the U.K., Australia and its allies.

POLITICO has identified at least 15 of these investments, which range from manufacturers of drones or electronics made from graphene — a carbon-based material 200 times stronger than steel — to artificial intelligence solutions and marine robotics.

While the U.K. has seen some of its homegrown talent snapped up by the might of American capital — most recently with last year’s $5.3 billion acquisition of Darktrace, once the darling of the British tech scene — there are some safeguards to keep technology protected, even from allies.

In February, the government gave security clearance for U.S. engineering group ESCO Maritime Solutions to buy out British naval defense supplier Ultra PMES Limited. This came with caveats, such as appointing a British government director and chief security officer, and retaining powers to compel the companies to support the U.K.’s defense and security if required.

However, the integration of U.S. companies into Britain’s defense, intelligence and civilian infrastructure is substantial, sometimes without similar publicly declared protections. Palantir, a data analytics company that was one of In-Q-Tel’s most successful early investments, has contracts in Britain including with central government data, the NHS, the armed forces and the police.

Other vast U.S. companies are similarly embedded. For example, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites help provide internet access for rural parts of Britain, and the Ministry of Defense has contracts with American defense-tech startup Anduril.

“The intelligence services use Palantir,” said the same former intelligence official, adding that GCHQ in 2021 struck a deal with Amazon for the storage of its data on the cloud “because it considered that they would be as secure as anything, and would be cheaper to do it.”

Britain for decades thought that embedding American tech was a “very clever collaboration,” they said, because the relationship between the two countries was a “permanent one that we could rely on, and was a more effective one than relying on the EU, which has a variety of strings attached to it. We were wrong.”

While the access of American companies to Britain is nothing new, the hyper-political nature of the current crop of tech billionaires with ties to Trump’s White House has caused disquiet in some parts of the country’s intelligence community.

Musk’s interest in influencing British and European politics has been explicit, and Palantir founder Peter Thiel — who helped fund and mentor Vice President JD Vance — is also “obviously highly ideological,” said one figure in the U.K. intelligence community now working in the private sector.

“Musk and Thiel, Starlink, Palantir, Anduril, anything like that, in my view, really needs to be purged from our systems no matter the cost, because you’ve got an oligarchic, authoritarian system emerging and those people are right in the middle of it.”

Prepare for the worst

Those who have seen the special relationship up close on intelligence are split as to what has to be done, with most agreeing the most concerning moves come from America’s softening stance toward Russia.

“They voted with Russia, Iran, North Korea and China on Ukraine in the United Nations — it’s just unthinkable a year ago,” said the intelligence figure working in the private sector.

RUSI’s Melvin told POLITICO that the cessation of intelligence sharing with Ukraine had been a “flashing amber light” to U.S. intelligence partners. “We’re not yet in a crisis, but there is a new level of caution in the relationship.”

But the stance of the British government has been, broadly, not to criticize Trump. “There’s still a significant resistance in Whitehall, particularly, to being prepared to discuss the fact that the trust in the U.S. has gone,” said one former senior intelligence official. “Some are hoping that it can be gotten back, and that they can limit the damage and it won’t really happen, not understanding that it already has happened.”

“You have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst,” another former senior intelligence official said, with future possibilities including a U.S. withdrawal from NATO and its “descent into unreliability as an ally.”

However, they added, the Five Eyes relationship is so “deeply embedded and differently governed” that it will be “the last thing of the transatlantic relationship to unravel,” as it is run by “professional intelligence heads, not by politicians.”

“You can’t kick America out of Five Eyes,” they said. “It’d be like kicking England out of the United Kingdom — it doesn’t work, the whole concept falls apart.”

Others are more bullish about Britain’s prospects, with one former U.K. minister involved in security telling POLITICO: “America doesn’t hold all the cards, and I saw this during my time in government: Our people have been so conditioned by this sense of America’s power, we gave up flexing our own muscles with them so long ago.

“I had to remind people that it is a partnership, not a subservient relationship. There’s no need to redefine it or untangle it, we just need to assert ourselves as an equal partner.”

‘Trust arrives on foot‘

As with its position in NATO, America’s enduring place in the intelligence community has been in large part due to the monetary and technological might it contributes.

“On rough orders of magnitude for Five Eyes, if you worked off the idea that the U.S. puts in the same in terms of overall resources as the other four of the five eyes combined, you wouldn’t be far wrong,” said one former intelligence official who has worked closely with America.

Several former intelligence officials said that such a close, trusting relationship with an ally would be the most difficult thing for Britain to replace were America to withdraw from the intelligence relationship.

Even with Britain’s slight improvement of relations with Europe under Starmer, it would take time to build the same type of understanding and shared practices it has with the U.S. with anyone else.

For example, Melvin noted that though the U.K.-France relationship is strong, there is not the same level of trust on sharing intelligence. Similarly, he added that Japan has for years been unable to get up to an adequate level of “intelligence hygiene” in its security apparatus, despite talk of its becoming a sixth member of Five Eyes.

But the potential departure of Trump’s America from the standard international order does provide the U.K. with an opportunity to step into the leadership role. And although it cannot match America’s financial clout, the U.K. still carries some of the respect in Europe that America is quickly losing.

“All across the Nordic and East European countries, the American reputation is gone. The old NATO has gone — it’s not going, it’s gone,” said one former intelligence official who worked with NATO allies. “In the eyes of the numerical majority of NATO countries, the U.K. is the only country that could replace America.”

“Trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback,” the official added. “It will take a long time to rebuild it.”

“That doesn’t mean that NATO as an institution is dead or worthless; quite the contrary,” they said, “but the old NATO structure, which was based in trust on the U.S. coming to bail out Europe in event of a disastrous attack by the Russians, now has no credibility.”

Britain’s scramble to put together a “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine, with NATO at the heart of discussions, despite the threats from Vladimir Putin, shows that Starmer and his Defense Secretary John Healey understand its value as an institution, the former official said.

NATO’s main value lies in its creation of space, both literal and figurative, for countries to exchange intelligence and confidences, they said.

“The EU has got nothing like this at all, and NATO does it — not just with its members, but with its partners, which include Japan and Australia. NATO is actually already a global organization, it just needs to formalize it.”

The U.K. is already working to strengthen ties within NATO, leading almost weekly summits with France over Ukraine’s future and the future of Europe’s defense capabilities.

Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s insistence this month that the U.S. is as “active in NATO as it has ever been,” recent moves have shown this may not always be the case — with the question remaining for a cash-strapped and unpopular Labour government: “Can Britain step up?”

Speaking on Tuesday U.K. Fishing Minister Daniel Zeichner told a parliamentary committee there would be “no linkage” between fishing negotiations and talks in other areas like security or reduced border checks for goods.

EU governments have hinted that agreement on fishing is their price to give ground on Keir Starmer’s own priorities and say the issues should be dealt with as a package.

Member states like France are worried that they could lose lucrative fishing rights in British waters when the current maritime agreement expires in June 2026. They want to move to more permanent access arrangements.

But Zeichner told a hearing of the U.K. parliament’s Environment Committee: “The French will say what they will say, but we are absolutely determined to stand up for the interests of the U.K. fishing industry.”

Stressing that he was the minister in charge of fishing talks, he added: “I wouldn’t believe everything that is rumored around an issue like this, because obviously there is lots and lots of speculation, but of course, we have discussions, because the transitional period comes to an end in the middle of next year. But no decisions have been taken and there is no linkage.”

In January, The Financial Times reported that the French government was refusing to engage on the question of a U.K.-EU security pact without assurances on fishing, with one EU official quoted as saying “everything is now seen as a quid pro quo”.

But Paris is not alone among EU capitals in wanting the issue dealt with as a priority.

Sweden’s EU Affairs Minister Jessica Rosencrantz last week told POLITICO: “I think we have to find a way where we can do both [fishing and security] because we want to move ahead with the defense partnership but for many countries it’s important to solve the other sensitive issues as well.”

A new security pact with Brussels is a key plank of Keir Starmer’s foreign policy strategy in light of moves by Donald Trump to distance himself from European security.

Brussels has proposed a €150 billion loan program for EU governments to spend on re-arming. The funds should be invested on a “buy more European” basis, according to Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president. 

But without a formal defense agreement with Brussels, the U.K. will be locked out of the scheme.

Let down before

Asked whether he had seen comments by Brexit minister Nick Thomas-Symonds hinting that he favored a more stable arrangement, Zeichner said: “He probably would say that. But what we want to do is to secure the best possible outcome that we can for U.K. fisheries, and that will be a further discussion to be held in the months ahead.

“We’re absolutely determined to stand up to the U.K. fishing industry. The fishing industry has been let down before, and I don’t intend to let that happen again.”

The minister’s comments were welcomed by Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the Environment Committee, who told him he was “absolutely on the money.”

“Fishermen felt that the deal that was done at the end of the Brexit negotiations was one that did not deliver what they had expected,” he said.

“Anything that is a further backwards step will be viewed very bleakly by the industry, and the even modest progress will still leave them quite a way short of where they want it to be.”

Four-way talks between London, Madrid, Brussels and Gibraltar began in 2021 in a bid to hammer out one of the trickiest remaining issues thrown up by Brexit: how a 6.8km² rock off the southern coast of Spain can function outside the EU.

A British territory since 1713, Gibraltar’s economy is heavily integrated with Spain’s. But since Brexit, border controls have become more onerous — making life harder for the 15,000 people who commute across its frontier daily.

To solve the problem, the Rock’s government wants to do away with border checks.

While big questions remain over how the system will work in practice, talks seemed close to a conclusion ahead of last year’s snap U.K. general election.

But the so-called “quad” of top negotiators has since met just once — on Sept. 19 — with no further rounds in the calendar for the last four months.

One EU diplomat said of the talks: “It’s basically stuck, is our assessment.”

Another person, an EU official, said that “nothing is foreseen” in terms of a deal or immediate further rounds of talks. Both were granted anonymity to speak on a sensitive matter.

In May last year Conservative Foreign Office minister David Rutley had told MPs to expect a deal “over the coming months, possibly even sooner.”

The negotiations, which were in their “political” phase, however had to be suspended during the U.K. general election campaign, which resulted in a Labour landslide and a change of administration in London.

‘The last sticking points’

MPs were told last year that the territory would likely have to align with some EU rules on product standards — while “juxtaposed” passport controls similar to those used on the Eurostar would be installed at its airport.

Speaking to broadcaster RTVE earlier this month, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said: “Right now, there’s a particular issue on the free movement of people and another on the free movement of goods which are the last sticking points to us being able to reach agreement.”

Albares said there was a determination on both sides to reach a deal, adding: “Those of us who have to decide on this are agreed that we have to get there and reach agreement for Gibraltar.”

U.K. officials say progress was made at the September meeting, but would not be drawn on why no further quad meetings had been scheduled. The quad meetings consist of the U.K. and Spanish foreign ministers, Gibraltar’s chief minister, and European Commission Brexit lead Maroš Šefčovič.

A spokesperson for the government of Gibraltar said it remained “committed to securing a mutually beneficial treaty that is safe and secure for Gibraltar, and which crosses none of either party’s red lines.”

They added: “Through dialogue, both negotiating teams have already found solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable.

“Gibraltar continues to prepare on a daily basis for further rounds of negotiations, which it anticipates will be convened soon, in order to work jointly to overcome the obstacles that remain.”

A spokesperson for the U.K. Foreign Office said that all sides of the negotiations agreed on “the importance of concluding an EU-U.K. Treaty as soon as possible.”

“The U.K. is committed to working with the Government of Gibraltar to conclude a treaty which protects sovereignty, U.K. military autonomy and secures future prosperity for Gibraltar and the region,” they said.

“We are steadfast in our support for Gibraltar and will only agree to terms that the Government of Gibraltar is content with.”

The genial Welshman — a former Labour MP now in the House of Lords as Lord Murphy of Torfaen — will have six months to report his findings to Downing Street and Stormont.

The review is a U.K. government commitment flowing from its 2019 Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union. Its Irish trade protocol specified that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the U.K., should continue to enforce European goods rules to maintain barrier-free trade with the neighboring Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who mostly backed Brexit but loathe the new restrictions on goods coming from Britain, spent two years sabotaging regional government at Stormont in protest. They relented in early 2024 after the protocol rules were eased and, mostly, repackaged in two unionist-wooing agreements: the Windsor Framework and Safeguarding the Union.

One element of the original protocol that didn’t change was its requirement for Stormont to hold a 2024 vote on keeping the post-Brexit trade rules in place. That happened last month, passing easily with majority backing from Irish nationalists and the middle-of-the-road Alliance Party — but garnering not a single vote from the unionist minority.

Because the trade rules failed to win cross-community backing, the U.K. government is organizing a review into possible improvements that would, somehow, placate the unionist side of the house.

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn announced Thursday that Murphy will lead that review and report findings by July. Unionist hardliners immediately denounced Murphy as a Remoaner and Europhile.

Jim Allister, the Traditional Unionist Voice leader who won a British parliamentary seat in last year’s election, noted that the review’s terms of reference require that any proposed changes to Northern Ireland’s trade rules win backing from both sides at Stormont. Given the region’s polarized and sectarian politics, this would give the Irish nationalist side led by Sinn Féin an effective veto, he argued.

“Far from providing a path to change, the review outcome is tethered to nationalist consent. Once more unionists are being treated as fools,” Allister said.

But Murphy built a reputation for even-handedness and attention to detail during his previous career at Stormont, where he served as Mo Mowlam’s deputy as Northern Ireland secretary during the 1997-98 negotiation of the Good Friday deal.

While the outspoken and eccentric Mowlam garnered the headlines, Murphy spent months away from the spotlight leading the U.K. government’s team in the crucial “strand two” of negotiations. These spelled out how a future cross-community administration for Northern Ireland would coordinate cross-border policies with the government in Dublin — an agenda long opposed, but grudgingly accepted in the end, by most unionists.

Such bridge-building between the two parts of Ireland became a cornerstone of the Good Friday compromise package. But it was undermined first by Brexit, with its threat to make the Irish border “hard” again, followed by the unionists’ two-year shutdown of Stormont, which also torpedoed political cooperation with Dublin.

Murphy — who also served as Northern Ireland secretary from 2002 to 2005 during the first protracted collapse of Stormont — is already on the record describing the trade protocol, and particularly the Windsor Framework rejig, as a necessary policy to limit Brexit-related shockwaves in Ireland.

In his 2024 Lords speech lauding the deal negotiated by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that finally got Stormont restored, Murphy rejected unionists’ claims that Northern Ireland should have the same trade rules as Britain. He said there had always been checks and restrictions on goods movements dating to Northern Ireland’s foundation in 1921 shortly before the rest of Ireland won independence from Britain.

“The idea that somehow or other Northern Ireland should not be different really is nonsense,” Murphy said then. “Northern Ireland is different in all sorts of ways.”

The allegation centers on Britain’s failure to comply with EU law on the free movement of people.

The U.K. left the bloc in early 2020 but in the Brexit deal agreed to continue to allow European nationals and their families already residing in Britain to remain living there. The treaty gave Brits the same rights to live, study and work in the EU.

The Commission is taking the U.K. to the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ). Although Britain ceased to be bound by EU law post-Brexit, certain matters contained in its withdrawal deal fall under the European court’s jurisdiction ― much to the annoyance of Britain’s pro-Brexit politicians.

In a statement, the Commission blasted the U.K.’s “shortcomings” in implementing the terms of the treaty, “which continue to affect EU citizens.”

“After carefully assessing the replies of the United Kingdom, the Commission maintains that several elements of the grievances remain unaddressed, including on the rights of workers and the rights of extended family members,” the Commission added.

The violations happened at the end of 2020, the Commission said.

A U.K. government spokesperson said the cases related to “issues from when the U.K. was an EU member state and during the transition period,” which was in 2020 before the signing of a trade deal between the two sides.

“We remain focused on working to reset our relationship with the EU and to make Brexit work for the British people,” the spokesperson said.

Politicians from the Conservative Party, which was in government at the time of the Brexit negotiations, were quick to seize on the dispute.

“The EU’s enthusiasm to continue to take proceedings against us in the ECJ should be a warning to Keir Starmer as he tries to edge us back under its jurisdiction in more areas and extend mobility rights for EU citizens,” Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel said. “I hope the government will strongly defend this claim.”

The president-elect’s America First trade policies make Britain’s attempted pivot to global free trade that bit tricker. His lukewarm attitude to Ukraine and NATO also has people on both sides of the Channel worried.

For many Brussels officials involved in shaping the relationship between the EU and the U.K, last week’s U.S. election result means one thing: stronger ties between the somewhat estranged neighbors.

It may not be what the billionaire Republican politician had in mind — and in Britain, too, Brexiteers worry that the new U.S. president might end up pushing Britain into Brussels’ arms.

Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch this week urged the government not to turn away from Washington, bemoaning that “Labour is not interested in anything except the EU.” She called on ministers to see beyond Trump’s rhetoric and invoke his “historic and familial links to the U.K.”

There’s certainly appetite for a closer relationship between the U.K. and Europe in Brussels. One EU official told POLITICO that Trump’s return had their colleagues looking hopefully across the Channel.

“Two people have said to me in the last 48 hours that the policy response to Trump is massive investment on defense, how to deal with tariffs, and forging new security agreements with third countries. The U.K. was top of the list,” they said. Like others quoted in this story, the official was granted anonymity so they could speak candidly.

A second insider, an EU diplomat, said they could “see the political logic” of Britain and the continent pulling closer for mutual benefit.

“I imagine that our support to Ukraine would be the first area where we would deepen our cooperation,” the diplomat said. Trump has pledged to cut funding for the war effort against Russia, while his son Donald Trump Jr. joked hours after the election result that Kyiv was about to lose its “allowance.”

The diplomat added: “Depending on the extent of Trump’s antics, one can imagine that pressure could grow to deepen cooperation in other areas as well.”

Continuing impact

Trump’s return to the world stage comes just as Britain and the EU are getting down to business for what Starmer calls a “reset” of U.K. relations with Brussels.

Areas from energy to defense to agricultural trade and youth exchanges all seem to be up for grabs. But the scope of negotiations and topics now looks set to be influenced by the U.S. election result.

“It complicates the life of the U.K. government a lot,” a second EU diplomat said. For Britain, pivoting away from Europe becomes more difficult if the world’s largest economy is looking inward. It’s not entirely clear whether Trump sees the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Uthe .K. as all that special. Meanwhile, Brussels spies an opportunity.

Starmer’s big red lines on keeping the U.K. out of the single market, customs union and freedom of movement have been the main block to negotiations so far — limiting the scope of what can be done.

But Britain is already struggling to replace EU trade lost from Brexit with more trade from around the world. The country’s Office for Budget Responsibility warned in October that weak trade figures holding back growth reflected the “continuing impact of Brexit.”

Trump’s plan for blanket tariffs of 10 percent to 20 percent could make matters even worse — and cost the U.K. £22 billion a year in exports, economists at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy have calculated.

“The U.K. needs to review its red lines, and it needs to come up with a new plan,” the diplomat added. “You know, when circumstances change, one needs to rethink one’s course of action.”

Some observers think the U.K. can grow closer to both Brussels and Washington.

“We should pursue energetically an improved deal with the EU, although that won’t be straightforward,” former Bank of England Chief Economist Andy Haldane told the Guardian. “The new government committed to that and should keep on committing to that.”

“That should not, though, preclude — and does not preclude, as difficult as it will be — seeking out a free trade arrangement with the U.S. under a new Trump presidency,” he added.

Others remain unconvinced.

“I don’t see any special deal coming for the U.K,” Kim Darroch, former U.K. ambassador to Washington, told the Times. Trump’s moves “will be quite a challenge for the U.K,” he said.

Unless the U.K. can secure some kind of carve-out from Trump’s blanket tariffs, Starmer will likely resist pressure to think again about the EU reset. That’s music to the ears of some.

‘Politically suicidal’

“We’ve got an isolationist president-elect in the United States,” Richard Foord, a Liberal Democrat MP, told a gathering of EU citizens in London days after the U.S. election result. “ I am concerned that Trump’s comments during the election campaign are not mere campaign slogans, but are how he intends to govern. These are reasons, for me, why we need more Europe in the U.K.”

Nick Harvey, a former armed forces minister in ex-PM David Cameron’s 2010-2015 coalition government, said the U.K. would pay a price if it didn’t start looking toward Brussels. “We cannot be the 51st state of America — it makes no sense geographically, politically or industrially,” he said.

“If we attach ourselves pathetically to their coat-tails, instead of being a major player in Europe’s defense, we will pay a price for that folly.”

Harvey, now chief executive of the European Movement U.K., an independent pressure group, argues that failing to link up with the EU would be “potentially suicidal both militarily and economically.”

Blueprints on how cooperation could be enhanced are already being drawn up. A new report by the Independent Commission on UK-EU relations recommends that Brussels and London work quickly to pull together “a thin agreement” on security that could gradually expand over time.

The U.K. could then sign up to “off-the-shelf” agreements at its own pace — for example participation in joint EU defense projects or rekindling a relationship with the European Defence Agency.

But like the diplomat quoted above, the report also warns that existing red lines “continue to preclude anything that would fundamentally alter the broader UK-EU relationship.”

The British prime minister wouldn’t be drawn on the prospects of a transatlantic trade war when quizzed by reporters on Monday, telling journalists he didn’t want to get into “a hypothetical discussion.”

Starmer also insisted his country wouldn’t be forced to choose between Europe and America.

“Obviously, European countries are our nearest trading partners and we have got a long shared history,” he said.

“But, equally, the special relationship with the U.S. was forged in difficult circumstances [and] it’s hugely important to the U.K. I want to ensure we’ve got good relations with all of our important allies, and that includes the EU and the U.S.”

Speaking as he travelled to the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, the British prime minister downplayed suggestions that the U.K. could end up caught in the middle of an EU-U.S. trade war — and declined to start talking up British carve-outs from Trump’s plan to slap tariffs on American imports.

“I want good relations with all of our allies, that’s really important — whether that’s the EU or the U.S.,” Britain’s newly-elected center-left leader said.

“Obviously European countries are our nearest trading partners and we have got a long shared history,” he added, pointing to two world wars. “But equally the special relationship with the U.S. was forged in difficult circumstances, it’s hugely important to the U.K. I want to ensure we’ve got good relations with all of our important allies, and that includes the EU and the U.S.”

Trump has vowed to bring back jobs to the United States, and argues he can do so by imposing across-the-board duties of up to 20 percent on American imports. Economists have warned that the plan would hit U.K. exporters hard, even as British ministers insist they are “extremely well prepared” for such an outcome.

The EU is meanwhile braced to strike back hard at Trump tariffs.

Pressed on how confident he is that the U.K. could win carve-outs from Trump’s plan — or whether retaliatory tariffs are on the cards — Starmer declined to answer.

“I’m not going to get into a hypothetical discussion about policies before we actually get to those policies,” the British prime minister said. “So we’ll come back to it when we see what they actually are.”

Trump ties ‘positive and constructive’

The British government has been keen to talk up its ability to do business with Trump despite a host of highly-charged comments by Labour politicians before the party took office in July.

Starmer, a strait-laced former prosecutor, also makes for a stark contrast to the freewheeling Republican firebrand. Yet the pair enjoyed a two-hour dinner at Trump Tower in New York in September, and Starmer told reporters Monday that he is a “big believer in face-to-face engagement.”

“I think he intended when we met in New York to ensure that we can create a good relationship going forward,” said the British prime minister. “That’s the right thing to do.”

On June 22, 2017, almost a year to the day after Britain voted to leave the European Union, representatives from 193 nations filed into the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York to discuss another matter concerning the U.K.

The issue: Should the U.N. request an advisory opinion from its disputes court on the incendiary issue of one of Britain’s final imperial treasures: the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Did the U.K. act unlawfully by separating the islands from Mauritius as part of British decolonization efforts way back in 1967? And had it breached international law when it forcibly prevented Mauritius from resettling Chagossians on the islands to make way for a U.S. military base?

The assembly’s verdict — a resounding yes — would set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the U.K. government’s controversial decision this October to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius in a deal widely criticized by conservatives back home.

So what really happened behind the scenes?

The fact that the bilateral dispute had made it to the U.N. in the first place raised eyebrows among members of the U.K. delegation at the time.

“We do not doubt the right of the General Assembly to ask the [International Court of Justice] for an advisory opinion — on any legal question,” Matthew Rycroft, the U.K.’s then-representative to the U.N., told diplomats assembled in the hall in 2017.

“But the fact that the General Assembly has not concerned itself with this matter for decades shows that today’s debate has been called for other reasons.”

When the speeches were over, 94 countries voted in favor of a referral to the ICJ and just 15 against.

Out of the EU countries present, only Croatia and Hungary voted against while Cyprus voted in favor of the resolution. The other EU members abstained.

‘Brexit dropped from the heavens’

Many at the time saw the refusal of key EU countries to back Britain as a sign of the country’s diminished foreign influence after Brexit.

The country’s diplomatic efforts were spearheaded at the time by its gaffe-prone foreign secretary, and staunch Brexiteer, Boris Johnson.

“Brexit dropped from the heavens, quite frankly,” Philippe Sands, a legal adviser to Mauritius in the Chagos case, told POLITICO. “There is no question that, but for Brexit and Boris Johnson, the resolution would have had less chance of reaching the General Assembly, or being adopted with such a large majority.”

A spokesperson for Johnson dismissed that claim as “total rubbish.”

But Sands believes that, had the U.K. remained in the EU, the rest of the bloc would have supported it — and urged its allies to do the same.

This was also a view held inside the British government, according to a former civil servant at the Foreign Office, who was granted anonymity in order to speak frankly.

“It was widely viewed at the time in the Foreign Office that all EU countries and their allies ordinarily vote down such a motion affecting another member state at the General Assembly,” they said. “But post-Brexit we lost that protection, so the U.K. didn’t benefit from the EU votes and those of its allies, and hence the wheels being set in motion to Chagos leaving today.”

“In a way this is the first element of Brexit leading to the U.K. losing territory. It showed how that initial grab for purported sovereignty might actually lead to its diminution.”

As legal counsel to Mauritius, Sands had spent the days leading up to the vote lobbying other U.N. members in 10-minute slots. “It was plain that Britain’s stock had fallen, and the country was more isolated,” he said.

Although the mood music appeared to be in Mauritius’ favor, Sands — who writes about the issue in his memoir, the Last Colony — couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing when he watched the vote live on U.N. TV back in the U.K. 

“The Mauritian team was tiny — it was just three or four people against the might of the British and Americans, who were lobbying massively. We sensed it was going well, but we couldn’t believe it would actually happen, when push came to shove, until the actual vote.”

‘Rock-solid support’ pre-Brexit

David Hannay, the U.K.’s former ambassador to the U.N. and a crossbench peer, also noted a stark contrast between the support the U.K. could bank on before and after Brexit.

Before the U.K. voted to leave, Britain enjoyed “pretty rock-solid support at the U.N.” and there was a “working assumption that the EU stands by its members’ definition of their sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

When Britain left the bloc, EU members “deserted that point, and their desertion carried with them a lot of others who might have stuck by it,” Hannay added, pointing out that “the French obviously were influential at that stage with a lot of African countries.”

A few months after the General Assembly vote, however, the U.K. suffered another blow when it lost its seat on the ICJ to India. This meant the court would be without a U.K. judge for the first time since its creation in 1946. Sands believes this was no coincidence. 

“The reality seems to be that Brexit, [the 2003 invasion of] Iraq and Chagos combined to cause the British to lose their judge,” he said. This was not on account of “poor lobbying” to secure the U.K. a spot, as some have said, but “poor political decisions” at home, Sands argues.

In 2019, the ICJ determined in an advisory opinion that the U.K.’s continued administration of the Chagos Islands “constitutes a wrongful act entailing the international responsibility of that State.” It said the U.K. “has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible, and that all Member States must cooperate with the United Nations to complete the decolonization of Mauritius.” 

Hannay points out that while a British judge on the ICJ is “in no sense obligated to support a U.K. view, the absence of such a person must have weakened the arguments that might have been heard at the ICJ when they took the General Assembly request for an advisory opinion.”

The U.K. then suffered yet another humiliating defeat at the U.N. when the General Assembly voted to accept the ICJ’s opinion, with only four countries supporting the U.K. and the U.S. in voting against — and 116 voting in favor. 

“You could sense the power slipping away,” recalled Sands. 

Resistance

At that point, the U.K. government chose not to comply with the ICJ’s ruling — something critics of the current Labour government’s deal argue it should have continued to do.

But the U.N. continued to apply pressure, and in 2021 its special international maritime court rejected the U.K.’s claim to sovereignty. The U.K.’s then-Conservative government agreed to reopen negotiations with Mauritius in 2022.

Finally, following years of negotiations, the Labour administration announced on Oct. 3 that — after more than half a century — it would give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, albeit with carve-outs to protect the U.K./U.S. airbase on Diego Garcia.

Looking back, Sands sees Britain’s EU departure as a major contributor. “Brexit was a handmaiden to the 2017 vote at the U.N., and without the decision to have a vote and then the vote itself, there wouldn’t have been an ICJ ruling,” he says. “So it is perfectly logical to say that Brexit contributed to this point.”

But Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, believes the U.K. would have lost the vote even if the EU had united behind it.

“The General Assembly is a venue where non-Western countries have a built-in majority, and sorting out the unfinished business of decolonization is a perennial priority,” he says.

“I think it is also true to say that the U.K. had not focused very much on the General Assembly in the years before 2017, as its focus at the U.N. was the Security Council,” Gowan adds. “After its set-backs in 2017, the U.K. mission in New York rebooted its approach to the General Assembly, and invested more in diplomacy there. I think Brexit may have been a factor, but it was not the only factor.”

Samuel Jarvis, a senior lecturer in international relations at York St John University, who has co-authored a paper on the U.K.’s declining influence at the U.N. post-Brexit, also believes the matter isn’t quite so clear-cut.

“What we found very clearly and definitively is that, regardless of whether the U.K. had left or remained in the European Union, they would have lost that [2017] vote,” he says. “The General Assembly is made up of lots more states from the global south which are much more sympathetic to a decolonization argument, which was what was put forward. So it was always the case that the U.K. would lose that vote, even if it had the full support of the EU. But that’s not to say that there weren’t other significant dynamics to the vote.”

Jarvis concedes that Brexit meant the U.K. won less support from its former EU colleagues than it would have had previously. But while decolonization is traditionally a divisive issue among EU-member states, Jarvis says “you would expect more support than the U.K. got,” especially among countries like France with a long colonial history.

But Brexit played another role in Britain’s ultimate decision to give up the islands, he believes.

As a result of Brexit, he said, “the U.K. needs to build closer relationships with states beyond Europe. If the U.K. wants to be a power that has stronger connections beyond Europe, it inevitably [needs] to better engage with Asia, South America and Africa in particular.

“If the U.K. is seeking to build stronger diplomatic ties with these states, then it is much harder if it is seen to be breaking international law, particularly on an issue linked to decolonization. And how can the U.K. effectively challenge states such as China on certain legal issues, if it is also seen to be violating international law in this way?”

‘Dismal act of self-harm’

Euroskeptics hotly contest the idea that Brexit Britain alienated its allies to the point of losing prized territory — and some reject Labour’s deal outright.

“The Chagos vote was the result of massive Chinese lobbying in the U.N. in which they played on general anti-colonial sentiment,” a spokesperson for Johnson said in a statement.

“The vote only took place because the Foreign Office mistakenly decided long before Brexit to engage with the legal process — though the claim of Mauritius was totally without merit.”

The spokesperson added: “Even after that vote there was no need for Britain to give up the islands. Had Boris Johnson and the Conservatives remained in power this dismal act of self-harm would quite simply never have happened.

“There is one reason and one reason only for the surrender of the Chagos islands — and that is the total spinelessness of Keir Starmer and his empire-hating Labour Party.”

MP Rupert Lowe, representing Brexiteer Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, rejected Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s claim that a binding judgment from the ICJ against the U.K. “seemed inevitable.”

“That seems misleading verbal baby food at best,” he told the House of Commons. “So far, there has been a non-binding advisory opinion and nothing to suggest that we will breach any form of international law. At a time of increasing global conflict, will the foreign secretary explain to the House why there is such urgency to do what he is proposing? It seems to be a case of acting in haste and repenting at leisure.”

Some now fear the surrender of the islands could have dangerous knock-on effects for U.K. security. “We have no clear details of any safeguards that will guard against China, a close ally of Mauritius, setting up military facilities and surveillance capacity not far away,” Shadow Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell said in the same Commons debate.

‘In the right place’

While debate rages in London, Hannay, the former U.K. ambassador, is ultimately supportive of the outcome Britain has landed on. “I think we’re probably in the right place where we should have been anyway,” he said. “I don’t think anybody any longer disputes that the removal of the Chagossians way back by the government was quite wrong, unjustified and contrary to human rights.”

Sands spent years arguing for Mauritian sovereignty to be recognized under international law, and for the Chagossians to be able return to their lost homeland.

As an ardent Remainer, there’s an irony for him in the way Brexit played a part.

“It doesn’t make me feel any better about Brexit,” he said. “I regret it, but we are where we are, and we live with the consequences of what the people voted for.”

The two countries’ ambassadors to the U.K. warned that a planned “reset” of post-Brexit ties could be imperiled if the British government presses ahead with a plan to charge value added tax (VAT) on fees for schools.

The government — which unveils a budget this week — is promising to ax an existing VAT exemption on private school fees from January.

This will result in an additional 20 percent charge to fees if schools themselves do not absorb the cost. Labour says it will help fund more investment in, and extra teachers for, the state sector.

But Miguel Berger and Hélène Duchêne, the German and French ambassadors to London respectively, argued that the institutions — which are primarily for the benefit of expatriates and don’t follow the U.K. national curriculum — are not “conventional” private schools and should not be swept up in Labour’s changes.

The pair top of diplomats pointed out that international schools are partially funded by overseas governments, and said an extra charge could therefore hamper relations.

Duchêne told the Financial Times applying VAT was “not in line with the reset to our relationship which the British government has instigated.”

Duchêne said: “We are not asking for an exemption to the rule; we are not the target of this VAT measure. Our schools are different from the target ones, since we follow special courses preparing for French exams.”  

Berger told the same paper that a German school in Richmond, south west London, is  “totally distinct from British private schools” and deserved to be treated differently.

“We would really like to see the British government recognize the importance of these schools — not only for our political and cultural relations but also for the people this will affect,” he said.

Despite being the U.K.’s most globally important industry, accounting for 12 percent of GDP and providing 2.5 million jobs, the finance sector is stuck on the sidelines even as relations with the EU thaw.

The two sides are rekindling their friendship as the new Labour government in Britain pushes to improve tense relations via a Brexit “reset.” That drive culminated in a first meeting between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels Oct. 2, with plans to keep talks going.

It should be a perfect opportunity to win better access for the City of London to the EU’s financial industry; since Brexit, the “square mile” has been cut off from the Continent almost entirely.

Yet the mammoth industry didn’t get so much as a mention in the October joint statement from Starmer and von der Leyen, and U.K. and EU finance chiefs haven’t dared raise the topic in recent meetings either.

It’s not the first time the City has been brushed aside in Brexit talks.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who formulated the U.K.’s 2020 Brexit deal, left financial services out of his pact with Brussels.

Now it appears Keir Starmer is doing the same.

All talk?

That’s despite the high potential for bargaining.

The EU is keen for a youth mobility agreement that would enable younger citizens to live and work on either side of the English Channel for a limited time.

Starmer has so far snubbed an offer from Brussels, but it’s viewed as a potential concession in negotiations that would allow the new Labour PM to push his own priorities.

The EU’s youth mobility offer in fact might have been a chance to push for better access for the finance industry, which in 2022 produced £278 billion in economic output, 12 percent of the U.K.’s GDP and £100 billion in tax revenue. Instead, Starmer looks set to prioritize easing Brexit bottlenecks in other areas: a veterinary deal, a defense pact, and recognition of professional qualifications.

Starmer has ruled out rejoining the bloc or the EU’s single market or customs union, so any attempt to discuss financial services access would be a waste of breath, according to Jonathan Hill, a Conservative peer who served as the U.K.’s financial services commissioner in Brussels between 2014 and 2016 before resigning after the Brexit vote.

“The government’s red line on the Single Market rules out any prospect of progress on  financial services,” Hill said in an emailed comment.

“And even if there is an improvement in relations, which the government is sensibly trying to achieve, financial services would be the very last issue on which the EU side would ever move. To ask for anything on it would therefore inevitably only lead to rejection.”

As relations improve, the two sides have started talking more about financial services in a technical forum, hoping to steadily improve the mood and find areas of cooperation. 

To keep up the positive chatter, Chancellor Rachel Reeves will also travel to Brussels, likely in December, to attend a meeting of eurozone finance ministers.

But amid all that noise, silence reigns on the best way to improve access for the City, the second largest global exporter of financial services (behind only the U.S.).

In a sign of just how little the square mile is now part of the U.K.’s demands on Brexit, Reeves did not raise the issue of market access at a September meeting with the EU’s financial services chief, Mairead McGuinness.

While the meeting was friendly and cordial, according to officials, the discussions centered on shared problems such as deepening capital markets and working together on sanctions, and the U.K. did not raise the topic of Brexit barriers for the City.

“The financial services sector is critical to promoting growth in the U.K. and in Europe,” said a Treasury spokesperson. “We are meeting with our European partners in order to reset relations, including how we can work together to strengthen cooperation in this important sector.”

McGuinness told a POLITICO event last week it would be “churlish” for the two sides not to speak. Yet she made clear that financial services “weren’t part” of broader trade agreements — and argued there was no going back to the way the financial system worked before Britain’s departure from the bloc.

“One of the areas where Europe is not and wasn’t sufficiently resilient is around financial services,” she said. “We didn’t have to worry about it when the U.K. was a member, and we’ve done things to try [to] deal with that lack of resilience.”

Déjà vu 

This is not the first time the City hasn’t got a look-in — despite the importance of the finance industry to the U.K. economy, jobs and exports.

As Johnson’s government was negotiating its deal with Brussels, the City hoped for much better market access — whether through some kind of mutual recognition of financial rules or by the EU’s deeming London “equivalent” to its own regulations.

But that hasn’t happened — making it more difficult for London firms to keep serving EU clients.

Only the U.K.’s powerful clearinghouses have the same unfettered access, called “equivalence,” to the bloc’s markets after Brexit.

“We wanted equivalence and we didn’t get equivalence,” said Chris Hayward, policy chairman at the City of London Corporation. “We’re not going to be able to turn the clock back to that — it should have happened at the time, but it’s not going to happen now.”

The City has adapted, and is now resigned to life outside the bloc.

While it lost some EU business, Brexit hasn’t dented exports to Europe or led to the feared mass job exodus from London.

So when it comes to a Brexit reset, the square mile will be watching from the sidelines.

In effect, Brexit talks are back for good.

After their first bilateral meeting since Starmer took power, the European Commission president and British prime minister on Wednesday promised a renewed “agenda of strengthened cooperation” between Britain and the EU. They just couldn’t quite say what it was for yet.

In a joint statement, the pair pledged to meet again later in the autumn to flesh out exactly what they would negotiate about.

They also set the stage for “regular EU-U.K. summits at leader-level to oversee the development of the relationship,” aiming to hold the first of what could be many in early 2025.

Youth mobility?

The British PM previously snubbed Brussels’ offer of a youth mobility agreement, which the Commission views as the price of entry for talks on Starmer’s own priorities like a veterinary agreement with the bloc to ease post-Brexit trade frictions; a security agreement; and the mutual recognition of professional qualifications.

Starmer has said he has “no plans” for such a scheme, which some in his government fear looks too much like the return of freedom of movement.

But Starmer and von der Leyen dodged the most difficult issues during their meeting at the European Commission on Wednesday, with Starmer telling reporters after the event that “today wasn’t about those individual issues,” but instead setting a framework for discussions.

“I firmly believe that the British public wants a return to pragmatic, sensible leadership when it comes to dealing with our closest neighbors, to make Brexit work and to deliver in their interest to find ways to boost economic growth, strengthen our security and tackle shared challenges like irregular migration and climate change,” he said.

For now, Brussels is playing it cool. The message from von der Leyen was a familiar one: implement the deals we already have, then we can really talk.

“We have a set of solid agreements in place,” she told reporters while standing next to Starmer. “We should explore the scope for more cooperation while we focus on the full and faithful implementation of the withdrawal agreement, the Windsor framework, and the [Trade and Cooperation Agreement].”

“Member states want to capitalize on the positive momentum which seems to be there with Labour government in office,” one EU diplomat told POLITICO. “But it’s not enough to simply say one wants a reset, it requires actual work … there can only be a reset if the U.K. moves.”

‘Tone matters’

When pressed on whether his red lines matched his rhetoric of a reset, Starmer told reporters after the meeting: “Tone does matter. Resetting does matter. And that has been a very important part of the message that I have carried into the meeting today: a return to pragmatism, to doing business in a respectful way and in a way which I think will focus on deliverables rather than charging to the nearest camera to use a megaphone.”

On the issue of youth mobility, he said: “I have made it clear what our position is and in particular that free movement is a red line. But today wasn’t about those individual issues, it was about the way in which we will conduct those negotiations and the emphasis was on what we can do, not what we can’t do, and on deliverables rather than running commentary.”

Diplomats from EU member countries said they also have other priorities, like securing long-term fishing access in U.K. waters and easier cross-channel energy trading.

Asked about fishing, Starmer said “that literally was not the nature of the discussion today.”

In a joint statement issued after their meeting von der Leyen and Starmer “agreed to take forward this agenda of strengthened cooperation at pace over the coming months, starting with defining together the areas in which strengthened cooperation would be mutually beneficial, such as the economy, energy, security and resilience, in full respect of their internal procedures and institutional prerogatives.”

Changes to the original blueprint presented by the European Commission in the spring might include caps on numbers, shorter stays in their host country, or tighter eligibility criteria, EU officials told POLITICO. They were granted anonymity to speak freely.

The proposal could also be renamed to give it a fresh political start.

Brussels is keen to make it easier for young people to live abroad, but the idea has received a cold reception in London and the Labour government has repeatedly said it has “no plans” to adopt it.

The policy idea — a major priority in both Brussels and Berlin — has thrown an unexpected spanner in the works for the new British prime minister’s “reset” of relations with the continent.

EU member countries are currently finalizing a mobility negotiating mandate for the bloc’s executive to formally open talks with London. Brussels is expected to propose a start to negotiations next year once a new Commission has found its feet.

Under the original proposal presented by the Commission to member states in the spring, people aged 30 and under would be able to move across the channel for up to four years. They would need to obtain some kind of visa or permit and have health insurance and the means to support themselves.

One of the EU officials told POLITICO that once talks began aspects of the scheme would be open to negotiation, including timeframes for how long young people would be able to stay in their host country.

EU officials have characterized establishing a youth mobility scheme as a “quid pro quo” for Keir Starmer’s own policy priorities on Europe and hinted that talks on other issues like mutual recognition of professional qualifications might not happen without it.

But the U.K. government is politically wary of pursuing a scheme which could impact migration statistics or some in government have suggested is politically reminiscent of free movement.

For the best part of a decade after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, the pro-Brexit ERG was by far the most organized of the Conservative Party’s multitude of parliament sub-groups, toppling one prime minister and applying consistent pressure on three others.

The gang has now mostly disbanded after the obliteration of the Tory Party in the 2024 election, which left the Conservatives with just 121 MPs.

But another grouping has fixed its sights on influencing Britain’s relationship with Europe, this time from within the Labour Party — and for the first time since the 2016 referendum, the pro-European side has the upper hand.

“There are more supporters of Brexit in the European Parliament than I sense there are in this [U.K.] parliament of 2024,” said leading Brexiteer Nigel Farage in his maiden speech in the House of Commons. “This is very much a Remainers’ parliament. I suspect in many cases it is really a Rejoiners’ parliament.”

Labour’s benches are stuffed with ardent Remainers, including many who campaigned for a second EU referendum in 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock. 

As a result, for the first time in 14 years, Britain’s prime minister will not face internal party pressure for Euroskeptic policies. 

Instead, Starmer will feel the heat to bring the U.K. into an ever closer post-Brexit union with the EU.

While the prime minister has promised an EU reset many times, as well as a closer trading and security relationship with the bloc, it is becoming clear his plans may not satisfy many Labour MPs.

“This is not about, as I say, a group of people who are a historical reenactment society wanting to prosecute 2016 and 2019 again, this is absolutely about what our relationship with Europe should look like,” Labour MP Stella Creasy said.

“Within that, yes of course we want to see parliament having a clear role.”

On the move

Creasy is the leader of Labour Movement for Europe, which boasts more than 120 MPs and peers among its ranks.

The group has been an official affiliate of the Labour Party for some time, although it may now have greater influence than ever before.

It is the repository of Labour’s most vocal Remainers and could prove influential as Starmer tries to navigate a new relationship with Britain’s allies across the Channel.

Creasy will lead a rally for the group on Sunday at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, a chance for MPs involved to plot out next steps over glasses of claret.

First up: a desire for a youth mobility scheme with Brussels and for “dynamic alignment” to keep British regulations in line with those of the EU.

A youth mobility deal, which Britain already has with countries like Australia and New Zealand, would allow young EU citizens to live and work in Britain for a certain duration.

The reverse would also be true, with young Brits given expanded working rights in the EU.

Starmer refused to rule out the prospect during a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

POLITICO also reported in July that the Germans are particularly keen on this kind of arrangement, along with a series of other treaties to bring the U.K. closer to the EU.

However, one EU official told POLITICO there appeared to be little appetite within the new British government for such a deal behind closed doors.

They said Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was “extremely negative” when youth mobility was raised in meetings before the election.

This likely flows from concerns about the political impact of higher immigration into the U.K., particularly after the stunning rise of Farage’s Reform Party in July’s election.

However, Creasy said Starmer should ignore these warnings and plough ahead with a deal.

“What is unreasonable is trying to conflate a youth mobility scheme with immigration — because it’s a very different scheme, it’s not freedom of movement, it’s not unlimited,” she said.

“Do they say that about the Canadians or the Australians or the New Zealanders? This is not a new idea. These are our closest neighbors.”

While Labour has ruled out rejoining the EU’s customs union and single market, some of its MPs believe the U.K. should be set on a long-term path toward these goals.

However, after such a decisive electoral win, Starmer doesn’t need to worry about backbench rebellions for now.

“Have you seen the size of our [174-seat] majority? I don’t think No. 10 will be concerned,” one Labour minister said.

“But I do think it’s true that because we are in such a multipolar political world now, that MPs will pull in different directions over the next five years depending on their constituency.”

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said vocal pro-European backbenchers probably won’t be as influential as the ERG — despite already having a “rather fraught relationship with the Labour leadership.”

However, he did warn that if the prime minister doesn’t eventually come forward with “big and bold ideas for improving the relationship with Europe … there will be a lot of annoyance and frustration, and then people will get angry or start criticizing.”

What’s to be done?

In the meantime, Labour MPs can expect Starmer to attempt to close a defense and security pact with Brussels and a “veterinary agreement” to reduce red tape for British exports to EU countries.

It is also a government priority to sign multiple deals on mutual recognition of professional qualifications for Britain’s services sectors, which would make it easier for City workers to work in the EU.

SEC Newgate’s Allie Renison, a former adviser to the British government, said the U.K. would need to consider moving toward the EU approach on things like a youth mobility scheme in return for such demands, especially around mutual recognition of professional qualifications.

“If the U.K. were a normal third country a lot of these ad hoc deals might be more feasible,” she said.

“But Brexit happened. The EU may want more of an overarching framework pulled together to encompass a lot of this stuff.”

Brussels may find allies in the House of Commons, as long as it doesn’t call Creasy’s pro-European gang “the new ERG.”

“That’s quite offensive … we’re a very different entity,” Creasy said.

“[Are we] organized? Yes, absolutely. Are we growing? Yes, absolutely. Do we have areas of policy we’re working on? Yes, absolutely.”

Jon Stone contributed reporting.

Britain left the student exchange program as part of Brexit, a decision which prompted anger from academics, youth groups and campaigners, who now want back in.

Warming relations between London and Brussels since the general election had led to speculation that the U.K. could be about to make a comeback.

But a U.K. government spokesperson told POLITICO: “We will work to reset the relationship with our European friends to strengthen ties, secure a broad-based security pact and tackle barriers to trade for the whole of the U.K.

“We also continue to work with the higher education sector to ensure our world leading universities continue to attract the brightest and best and support our economy, however we have no plans to rejoin the Erasmus Scheme.”

Germany’s ambassador to the U.K. told POLITICO earlier this summer that British reentry into Erasmus should be included in a wider Security and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and U.K.

Starmer on Tuesday flew to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss relations between the two countries and talk up a new bilateral deal with the country.

Public support

The government’s comments on Erasmus come as polling commissioned by POLITICO found that 51 percent of British voters believe rejoining the program would be a good idea, with just 15 percent against. Twenty-six percent thought it was neither a good nor bad idea and nine percent said they didn’t know.

The survey, conducted by pollsters at the More in Common think tank, found that supporters of all parties except Nigel Farage’s pro-Brexit Reform UK were supportive of rejoining. Even Leave voters back reentry by 38 percent for and 26 percent against, while Remain voters are in favor by 68 percent in favor to five percent against.

Ahead of the general election the European Commission suggested a “discussion on the possible association of the UK to Erasmus+.”

“Should the U.K. express to associate to Erasmus+, the Commission remains open to look into this process together with our U.K. counterparts,” the EU’s executive said.

Campaigners took aim at the British decision to stay outside the scheme.

“Even Boris Johnson famously assured everyone there was ‘no threat to the Erasmus scheme,’ so it is plainly untenable for the current government to feign any sniff of some inherited mandate for staying out,” said Mike Galsworthy, chair of the European Movement UK and founder of Scientists for EU.

“There should be no barrier now. The British public voted for change. Opening up youth opportunities with Europe is clearly something they’d like to see change on. So the question is — where is it?”

Erasmus+ provides mostly younger people with the opportunity to study abroad across the continent. More than 15 million Europeans have taken part in the program since 1987.

Cost concerns

Johnson’s Conservative government was offered continued associate membership of the program during Brexit talks, but decided against it — citing its cost.

One British diplomat this year put the net expense at almost €300 million a year and strikingly suggested this was in part due to Brits’ poor language skills leading to lower take-up of the scheme than elsewhere.

The U.K.’s new government is keen to tighten the public finances, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves widely expected to deliver a budget including tax rises and spending cuts in October.

Since leaving Erasmus, the U.K. has set up a home-grown system called Turing, which has been criticized for skimping on funding and support.

Update: This article has been updated to correct the number of people who have taken part in Erasmus schemes.

The Labour leader sees meetings with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron this week as prime moments to shake and make up after 14 years of Conservative rule.

First is Starmer’s meeting with center left ally Scholz on Wednesday. They will kick off negotiations on what is billed as an unprecedented bilateral treaty to boost business, trade and defense.

But Starmer also sees cozying up to Berlin as central to his push to winning closer ties with the EU. No. 10 Downing Street said Starmer will stress to the chancellor that he is focused on moving beyond 2016’s Brexit vote to rebuild relationships with key partners.

In a statement to coincide with the trip, the PM said: “We have a once in a generation opportunity to reset our relationship with Europe and strive for genuine, ambitious partnerships that deliver for the British people. 

“We must turn a corner on Brexit and fix the broken relationships left behind by the previous government. That work started at the European Political Community meeting last month, and I am determined to continue it, which is why I am visiting Germany and France this week. 

“Strengthening our relationship with these countries is crucial, not only in tackling the global problem of illegal migration, but also in boosting economic growth across the continent and crucially in the UK – one of the key missions of my government.” 

Starmer is pitching the need for closer ties as a way of improving the lives of “hard-working people,” in Downing Street’s characterization. 

That’s key because although Brexit is far from universally popular in the U.K., any signs that he is backtracking on the result of the referendum will provoke an uproar from Brexiteers.

No. 10 said the new bilateral treaty will aim to “increase joint action on illegal migration,” as well as boosting business and trade, deepen defense and security cooperation. 

The U.K. wants to agree the new partnership in early 2025, giving talks a six-month deadline. 

Time is of the essence, as dire polling for Scholz’s SPD means he is unlikely to be chancellor for years to come.

After their meeting wraps, Starmer will travel to Paris for the Paralympics Opening Ceremony on Wednesday night. 

But he’ll not be missing an opportunity to meet with Macron, heading for talks at the Elysée Palace Thursday. In all, Starmer’s trip will take in his fifth meeting with Scholz since entering office last month, and his fourth with Macron in the same span — underlining the scale of the European charm offensive Labour seems set on.

The introduction of the bloc’s new digital entry and exit system (EES), planned for November, has raised fears of queues and delays at the border for British travelers to Europe, who will have to register by having their fingerprints and photograph taken.

Logistics experts have also warned that freight could be caught up in the disruption, with knock-on effects on supply chains.

On Tuesday the Department for Transport announced £10.5 million in additional funding to help the Port of Dover, Eurotunnel at Folkestone and Eurostar at London St. Pancras to install technology and complete work to get their sites ready for the checks.

“Nobody wants to see excessive queues at our ports, which is why we’re providing this funding to ensure our borders are as prepared as possible for the upcoming change — despite EES being an EU initiative,” Lilian Greenwood, a minister at the Department for Transport, said.

“Since coming into government, we have been reviewing plans and closely supporting ports to make sure they have the right processes in place so that EES registration can be smooth and queue times kept to a minimum.”

Migration Minister Seema Malhotra said the government was “working hard with the European Commission, member states and ports to ensure we are well prepared, and minimise any disruption for Brits travelling into Europe.”

The announcement came after the U.K. Home Office said it would expand the zone used by French border officials at the Port of Dover to speed up the processing of passengers.

Emma Ward, chief operations officer at the Port of Dover, said the funding was a “welcome step towards the significant investments we are making to support government plans to prepare for the introduction of the EU’s EES scheme.”

The funding includes £3.5 million for the Granville Dock Project at Dover, a site earmarked for EES processing. While at Eurotunnel and Eurostar, the remaining funding will be used to install kiosks, carry out testing, and to recruit and train staff.

But the U.K. star power masks another change — the diminishing number of grassroots U.K. musicians performing at the continent’s festivals this summer.

The reason? An increase in complex and costly paperwork facing British artists as a result of Brexit.

According to research from the Best for Britain think tank, the representation of British artists at Rock En Seine has increased 24 percent compared to pre-Brexit levels. Beneath this headline figure lies a more troubling trend, however: a decline in opportunities for lesser-known U.K. musicians to secure bookings across Europe.

“Festivals will normally book from headliners, down,” Jamie Wade, a music agent at X-Ray Touring, which represents artists including Blur and Robbie Williams, explained. “What we’re seeing now is more domestic [European] artists being booked on the lower end slots.”

“They’re cheaper and a safer bet — and they don’t come with the risk of border delays.” 

Those concerns are due to the reams of additional forms, visas, and work permits British artists now need to produce to perform in the European Union since the U.K. left the bloc.

Industry figures say this has made it harder than ever for U.K. artists to make it big on the European stage.

Tempo tantrums

Oli Dewdney, bassist of indie rock band Sports Team, reminisces about the days when the group could jump in a van and drive to a last-minute gig in Brussels, Amsterdam or Hamburg  without a second thought.

Now, carnets (a form of passport for instruments), costs, and border delays mean those spontaneous gigs are nearly impossible.

“It’s wild how meticulous that carnet list has to be,” Dewdney told POLITICO. “It’s not just listing a guitar — it’s every snare, every cymbal, every drum stand. And if you want to add anything, it can’t be amended.”

An incident at the Spanish border was particularly frustrating, Dewdney recalled. After opening for The Libertines in Manchester, the band flew to Barcelona for an afternoon gig the following day — only to be stopped by armed guards who insisted on seeing their carnet.

“Our tour manager told [the guard] we didn’t need a carnet for the instruments,” Dewdney recalled, but the official presented Spanish regulation that conflicted with U.K. government guidance. “He laughed in our faces and said, ‘Are you telling me what you can and cannot bring into my country?’”

Following hours of tense negotiations, the official finally asked for a one-off payment of €150,  indicating that it would help the guards “forget all about” the disagreement. The band eventually handed over €161.67 — a seemingly arbitrary amount that made Dewdney question whether it was, in fact, a bribe.

“The guard told me ‘maybe if your tour manager was a bit nicer, none of this would have ever happened,’” said Dewdney. “He then sent us on our way.”

Rock ’n rollers

Proving compliance with tax rules, required for U.K. musicians to get paid for European gigs without incurring local taxes, is another post-Brexit quagmire, artists say.

A survey from the Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) found 73 percent of musicians had lost work or had issues being paid due to not receiving so-called A1 certificates on time. 

Jack Merrett, lead singer of the band Famous, described the process as “slightly bonkers.” “Musicians don’t conceptualize themselves as self-employed sole traders,” he remarked. 

During a short run of dates in France — notorious for its strict enforcement of A1 requirements — one Famous band member did not receive their certificate in time.

As a result, the band couldn’t get paid until the form arrived almost a year later — and only after months of back-and-forth with U.K. tax authorities, Merrett said.

“It was intense because touring isn’t cheap and there are a lot of expenses upfront. When you’re starting out, you either lose money or you just about break even.”

Treble makers

To deal with shifting rules and lengthy procedures, musicians are skirting the law to keep their tours on track.

Ploys include smuggling over merchandise in vans, or band members traveling on multiple passports to overstay their 90-day welcome. (Currently, British musicians can work in the Schengen area for only 90 days in any 180-day period.)

“We’ve had experiences of very intensely towing the line and also completely breaking the law,” admitted Deathcrash bassist Patrick Fitzgerald.

Although Fitzgerald said the band tries to do things by the book, he suspects that many musicians don’t — stretching the limits of an exemption on carnet forms for any gear that can be carried by a person, for example. “What does that mean? You can carry an amp, for example,” he said.

Others, such as London-based saxophonist and DJ Poppy Richler, said they’ve had to rely on VIP contacts to get past hold ups at the border caused by last minute rule changes.

Out of sync

Patchy enforcement only adds to the frustration.

“We’ve only been stopped when we try to follow protocol,” Fitzgerald said, recounting an occasion when the band spent hours at customs before performing at a festival in Brussels. They made it just in time.

“It honestly wasn’t worth it,” he concluded.

Music managers are also feeling the strain. Claire Kilcourse of Big Life Management, an agency which has represented artists including Kate Nash, said complex rules had added anxiety to European tours.

“I get really nervous waiting for my artists to tell me they’ve made it into Europe,” she said. Tour managers increasingly arrive at destinations before their artists to ensure affairs are in order, adding to costs, she noted.

Freelance tour manager Chiara Michieletto added that a lack of reliable information around rule changes had forced artists and their teams to rely on word-of-mouth and online forums instead.

“Everyone’s unsure about what’s going on, including those who are supposed to be advising or penalizing musicians,” Michieletto said.

Singing from the same tune?

Independent Society of Musicians chief Deborah Annetts has been banging the drum to make both current and previous U.K. governments aware of the challenges facing British musicians.

Her recommendations include a visa waiver agreement between the EU and U.K. She claims the previous Tory government rejected this proposal due to concerns that it might be perceived as an immigration issue.

“It’s farcical,” Annetts said. “It’s now easier for European musicians to tour in the U.K. than it is for U.K. musicians to tour in Europe.”

Annetts also backs a “cultural exemption” on carnet requirements when transporting musical equipment across the Channel. According to her, the previous government’s reluctance to provide guidance on carnets stemmed from a fear of legal repercussions.

“They were frightened of being sued if they got the advice wrong, so they didn’t do anything,” she said.

The U.K. Labour government’s manifesto promised to address visa and customs issues for performers traveling to Europe — one of several areas it has identified for rebuilding links with the EU.

The government will be “working closely with international partners and relevant stakeholders to consider how [they] can help create smooth arrangements for touring artists,” the Department for Culture, Media and Sport told POLITICO.

Leading the work on the issue is Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy — helpfully, one of her advisers, Harjeet Sahota, moonlights as DJ Hoops.

Nandy has always been “very open-minded and practical” about these concerns, said Bury North Labour MP James Frith, a former musician who plans to champion the sector’s causes in parliament. Post-Brexit, the government needs to come up with solutions to make touring “frictionless,” he said.

The music industry is hoping that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s passion for music — he played the flute and piano and attended a prestigious music school until he was 18 — means there’s a sympathetic ear in No. 10 Downing Street.

Frith’s own musical tastes  are slightly less classical. He performed for 12 years in the band FINKA — even playing a set at Glastonbury in 2003. “I was the lead singer of the only Manchester band you’ve never heard of,” Frith said.

The French.

“Very smart,” “more open” and “impressive” are just some of the descriptions used by French diplomats, ministers and officials to describe Starmer’s team after Labour came back to power in the United Kingdom after 14 years of conservative rule.

“It’s day and night. The [conservatives] were tetchy, very closed-minded. But now the guy I have opposite me is well-rounded, more convivial, humorous,” said one outgoing French minister who, like others quoted here, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The Elysée Palace declined to comment for this story.

While the far-right riots across the U.K. may be what’s on the new British prime minister’s mind at the moment, the French are thinking ahead, hoping that with Labour in power, Anglo-French ties can be strengthened after years of strained relations due to Brexit.

While the relationship between France and the U.K. improved under former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since the worst days of the Brexit talks, tensions remained with some of the Brexiteer ministers of the conservative government.

With them gone, Paris and London are finding a lot of common ground. Both want to Trump-proof defense and security on the Continent in case the former U.S. president returns to the White House.

Starmer has said he wants to reenergize relations with France and deepen cooperation between the defense industries of both countries. He also wants to strike a security deal with the EU and a veterinary standards pact as well as improve conditions for British touring artists with the bloc.

There’s no shortage of goodwill from Paris at the moment. French President Emmanuel Macron himself seemed so excited at Starmer’s win that he called the Labour leader to congratulate him on his win last month before he was officially appointed, a potential breach of protocol. The French president also tweeted a photo of himself in a warm embrace with the newly-elected British premier at the NATO summit in Washington.

The two sides are clearly enjoying a honeymoon period. But the thing about honeymoons is that at some point, they come to an end.

Pre-election courtship

The love-in between Labour and France has been brewing for some time now.

In September, Macron invited Starmer to the Elysée Palace, a privilege he had not bestowed on former Labour leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn or Ed Miliband.

During that first meeting in Paris, Starmer “positioned himself as a leader” in his talks with the French president, a French diplomat with direct knowledge of the talks said. The then-opposition leader talked about “the big issues: the U.S., China and trade” instead of locking horns with Macron on migration and Brexit. The move likely charmed the French president, who takes pride in his grasp of international politics.

“There’s good chemistry between Macron and Starmer, they get on well and have been in contact since they met a year ago,” Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head of the Eurasia group, told POLITICO.

“In France, there’s a new level of awareness, they are less obsessed with the EU-level talks but want to see a reengagement in the bilateral relationship,” he said.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy also led the courting of the French while Labour was in the opposition. Lammy has described himself as a “passionate Francophile” who has a love for “French writing, cuisine, music and thought” from his travels around Europe and Africa.

Lammy and Starmer also made it a point to go to the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy in June. The two were not originally invited, but the then-shadow foreign secretary used his contacts to secure invites for both men, as well as a photo-op with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Their attendance made it easy to hammer Sunak’s decision to leave Normandy early in the day and skip the French-led commemorations so he could get back to the campaign trail.

Actions speak louder than words

How long the honeymoon lasts with the French depends on a number of things, notably on whether Labour can match actions with words.

While Starmer pledged to “renew the bonds of trust and friendship” with the EU, the French want proof not just expressions of love. “They’ve got to stop on the fishing [issue],” said the outgoing French minister, who referenced a dispute over the access of French boats to British waters.

One obvious area of increased cooperation between Europe’s two nuclear-armed states is defense, given Donald Trump’s isolationist bent.

Lammy told the French magazine Le Grand Continent that the U.S. pivot away from Europe and toward Asia is something that will outlast the Republican candidate, adding “there is no doubt that we need to coordinate more and better.”

Since coming to power, the British government has said it wants to strike a wide-ranging security and defense deal with the EU that will be complementary to NATO.

The French have been eyeing a stronger relationship with the British government long before Keir Starmer became prime minister. A parliament report from the French National Assembly’s defense committee released in May called for the U.K. to be reintegrated into the European Defence Fund — in exchange, obviously, for financial participation.

“Macron has been forced to mourn his ambition of a political Europe of defense. We are looking at a reinforcement of European defense within NATO, which lifts an obstacle on the defense relationship between France and the U.K.,” Pierre Sellal, France’s former ambassador to the EU, said in an interview with POLITICO.

Brexit, the elephant in the room

But on trade, things could quickly get complicated.

A French diplomat with direct knowledge of Macron and Starmer’s talks welcomed Labour’s objective to sign a veterinary deal with the EU, but added that the French would be making sure that new developments did not “distort the market.” Labour has already tabled a bill to align U.K. product standards with new EU legislation.

At the heart of the French misgivings over the relationship is that fear that Labour will sweet-talk the EU into giving them what the conservatives failed to get: cherry-picking on sector by sector access to the single market.

“We are ready to take some forms of rapprochement but only within the limits of our [Brexit] red lines, that means preserving the single market and no cherry-picking,” the same diplomat said.

François-Joseph Schichan, a former French diplomat and now a director at consultancy Flint Global, said the French will likely take the lead in safeguarding the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation agreement.

“In the end what matters to the French is whether the U.K. in getting closer to the EU will accept a cost in terms of sovereignty,” he said.

Mason Boycott-Owen reported from London. Laura Kayali contributed reporting from Paris.

The new U.K. prime minister impressed the French president as he hosted the European Political Community summit in the historic Blenheim Palace in rural England this week.

The grouping was the brainchild of Macron, who oversaw its first meeting in Prague in 2022. He designed the gathering as an informal platform to discuss shared concerns without the need for black and white deals or statements at the end: a kind of talking shop on steroids.

It was a stroke of luck for Starmer that England had been chosen to host the latest EPC summit just two weeks after he won an election landslide. 

Earlier this month, the Labour leader scored an emphatic victory over the right-of-center Conservatives, taking his party back into government for the first time in almost a decade and a half. 

Macron, on the other hand, is on a markedly different trajectory. After more than seven years in power he took a gamble on snap parliamentary elections last month and was squeezed from the far left and the hard right. His grouping managed to cobble together a surprise deal to maintain influence on the next government — but was forced to compromise with right-wingers in the process.

The election was a risky throw of the dice designed to see off the growing threat from far-right leader Marine Le Pen, but spectacularly backfired, seeming to leave him a lame duck president at 47 years old.

And while Starmer’s center-left Labour Party is now dominant in the U.K. House of Commons, Macron’s plummeting personal approval ratings point to a fight should he seek at promote a candidate from his party in the 2027 presidential elections.

But while they may seem to have little in common in terms of their career pathways, the two centrists have struck up good relations fast and look set to make the most of what could be a short window of time on the world stage together.

Breach of protocol

In a potential breach of diplomatic protocol, Macron was the first world leader to phone Starmer and congratulate him as the U.K. election results became clear — before he had officially been appointed prime minister. The pair spoke again the following day once the British leader had entered Downing Street. 

Their first bilateral after the election was at the NATO summit in Washington the following week, during which Macron shared a photo of the pair in a warm embrace. And on the night after the Blenheim Palace summit, birthplace of Winston Churchill, the pair spoke one-on-one again before sitting down to a posh dinner together in the opulent surroundings. 

The chemistry between the two appeared warm on a stroll through the ornate water terraces of Blenheim, out of earshot of the cameras. Both were smiling, as Macron made occasional hand gestures to punctuate his points. For a few minutes the pair sat on a stone bench, chatting privately.

At a press conference in the late afternoon, Macron told POLITICO his new counterpart had ushered in a “new momentum for your political lives and domestic politics.” The sentiment echoed the insurgent political movement Macron formed in 2022: “En Marche,” now renamed “Renaissance.”

According to U.K. officials at Blenheim, the summit’s spotlight was shared between Starmer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That may have left Macron pondering whether he could be handing over the centrist powerbroker baton in Europe. 

“Macron must look at Starmer and wonder what might have been,” said Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. “From nowhere, the Brits — long viewed by Europe’s elite as a basket case — have emerged as putative leaders of the continent’s centrist tendencies.”

At his own press conference, Starmer said he sensed a “real appetite” for a reset in relations between the U.K. and Europe following the turbulent Brexit years, when the Conservatives were in government.

“We can only make progress on the issues that so many people care about, like illegal migration and national security, if we have the maturity and leadership to reach out a hand to our European friends,” the PM said. 

Warm words or concrete action?

The question is whether the warm words will lead to real changes on big-ticket issues such as illegal migration across the English Channel and continued barriers to trade between Britain and the continent. 

On the first, both Starmer and Macron suggested small steps could lead to a wider migrant returns agreement between the U.K. and EU in future. 

And it was notable that a number of migrants intercepted in the Channel the night before the summit were returned to France for the first time ever — although the U.K. side insisted it had been an operational decision for security services on the ground, rather than a change in government policy. 

Nevertheless, the indications are that the mood music is better between the two nations than in recent years. Just a few weeks ago, during the election campaign, the Conservative government in Britain was hinting it could rip up the European Convention on Human Rights in the hope of force-starting a controversial deportation scheme to Rwanda. 

In contrast, Starmer brought a copy of the 1949 Treaty of London to the Blenheim summit — the founding document of the Council of Europe. A government aide said the move illustrated a commitment to the rule of international law.

Starmer also announced a multimillion pound diversion of aid for poorer nations aimed at improving opportunities and reducing the pull factor for migrants towards Europe. It seemed a direct response to Macron, who has long argued the issue must be challenged closer to the source. The French president made the point again as he arrived at the Blenheim summit. 

A U.K. Foreign Office official said Macron had been pleased at how the Brits had handled the gathering — describing it as a “big tick” for the new Downing Street regime. 

But the same person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, argued a good relationship between Britain and its close neighbor wasn’t so unusual. “There are all the clichés that we hate each other, but we are close on most things,” the official said.

On Thursday — less than a fortnight into the new job — Britain’s new prime minister will host more than 40 of the continent’s leaders at a European Political Community (EPC) summit at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.

The timing, so soon after the U.K. election, is something most new leaders could only dream of — but the summit is not part of a Starmer masterplan to ingratiate himself with Europe’s elite.

It was his Tory predecessor Liz Truss who volunteered to host the meeting back in 2022. Rishi Sunak chose the date and venue — and then pushed the political ejector seat button by calling an election a few weeks before.

For Starmer, now taking Sunak’s place as PM and keen to pull the U.K. closer to Europe after years of Brexit turmoil, the summit offers a chance for a relationship reset.

“The EPC will fire the starting gun on this government’s new approach to Europe,” Starmer said Wednesday night. “We cannot let the challenges of the recent past define our relationships of the future.”

Good neighbors

For Starmer the summit has been described as “political speed-dating” — an opportunity to meet-and-greet dozens of European leaders in a single day.

The EPC format, tighter in attendees than the U.N. general assembly but broader than EU council meetings, leaves “time and space for wheeling and dealing,” said one European diplomat, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the event.

“These EPC meetings are always light on substance when it comes to the plenary agenda. Most leaders are happiest when there is plenty of time to have bilateral meetings with others.

“It’s almost like a bazaar where they all come in with little to-do lists of issues they want to fix with one or more others.”

That could suit Starmer right down to the ground.

The new U.K. prime minister has a long to-do list of his own: he wants progress on cross-Channel migration, revisions to Boris Johnson’s “botched” Brexit trade deal, and a broad new security pact with the EU covering everything from supply chains to intelligence-sharing.

Starmer already used last week’s NATO gathering in Washington to float the security pact with EU colleagues and launch discussions with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over a “deep” bilateral defense agreement.

“These are meetings that would probably take months and months and months for us to fit in as a team, if we were not taking advantage of this summit for the purposes of those relations and the EPC,” Starmer told reporters on his trip to Washington.

Tellingly, Starmer has prioritized talks this week with his two closest neighbors. He hosted Irish PM Simon Harris for dinner at his country residence, Chequers, on Wednesday night, and on Thursday evening will extend the same invitation to French President Emmanuel Macron, the driving force behind the EPC concept.

“It will be an opportunity for the Labour prime minister to present his vision of a reset in the relationship between the U.K. and the EU,” an Elysée official said Tuesday.

Tough love

So far, however, European leaders have played somewhat coy with the new British PM.

Asked what France wanted out of the Anglo-European reset, the French official quoted above replied: “Let’s not reverse things — there’s a new government in the U.K. and it’s up to them to explain how they see their future relationship with the EU.”

That echoed a European Commission spokesperson who said last week that it was “for the United Kingdom to say what it wants to make the relationship move forward.”

Such comments have left some U.K. officials concerned Starmer is aiming too high.

“Europe is sick of talking about negotiations,” one U.K. Foreign Office official warned. “Member states will argue Britain is getting too much too fast. All the nations have demands but will feel the U.K. is getting preferential treatment for leaving [the bloc].

“If the government goes in talking a big game about opening new negotiations, it will end up embarrassed at the end. This needs to be a summit about shaking hands and being nice.”

Worse still for Starmer, POLITICO reported this week that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will not be attending the summit in person, and that other EU officials are privately complaining about having to travel to the U.K. at all.

This general sense of skepticism has already caused frustration in London.

Allie Renison — a former British government adviser and now an associate director at SEC Newgate UK — said: “There is some surprise that Brussels seems to have put the ball in a new Labour government’s court to move things forward with the EU.

“The EPC meeting is a perfect opportunity for the EU to demonstrate commitment to collaboration with rest of Europe on foreign and security policy, which frankly it needs to shore up its own position as a major player capable of tackling geopolitical challenges — not least on Ukraine, in light of recent events in the U.S.”

“There is no time for this cat and mouse game about who moves first. We are beyond Brexit now.”

Security talk

Discussions on mutual defense and security are expected to dominate Thursday’s proceedings, with a particular emphasis on the threat from Russia.

“The summit is not about formal outcomes but about engaging on issues that are of concern to all those countries present, like Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, or energy security,” a third European diplomat told POLITICO.

The French official quoted above said a U.K. proposal to crack down on Russian oil shipments would definitely be on the agenda. Bloomberg News has reported Russian disinformation efforts will also be discussed in a session on “defending democracy,” chaired by Macron.

For his part Starmer is keen to push talks on migration, with illegal Channel crossings now hitting tens of thousands each year.

“Dangerous small boat crossings are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk,” U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said. “Criminal smuggling gangs are making millions out of small boat crossings … We will work right across Europe to tackle this problem at source.”

Memories of war

Also hampering proceedings to some extent is Sunak’s choice of venue.

Blenheim Palace is a baroque stately home in rural Oxfordshire, two hours’ drive from London. Limited accommodation nearby means most leaders are bringing only a small entourage.

But the palace was chosen for its symbolism, not its practicality. U.K. diplomats seem obliged to mention at every opportunity that it was the family home of Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister and a noted proponent of European cooperation.

Other aspects of the venue’s history are rather less diplomatic, however.

Built from 1705, it was named after the Battle of Blenheim, in which an English-led allied army roundly defeated a French and Bavarian force. The country house was intended as a reward for the Duke of Marlborough, the lauded commander who sent the French and Bavarians packing — and cemented Britain’s place as a first-rank power in Europe.

It’s a history that may, at times, have suited the Conservatives’ approach to the continent. But if Starmer wants to reset the relationship, he will need a different tack.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think tank, said Starmer must be “modest” and recognize that “Britain has a poor reputation” in Europe.

“They know that you are not Boris Johnson,” he wrote, in an open letter to the new PM. “But you represent a country that, as far as they are concerned, behaved appallingly during the long years of the Brexit negotiations.”

European diplomats tend to agree. “The best thing Starmer could do if his aim is to mend ties with the EU is exude trust, warmth and pragmatism,” a fourth told POLITICO.

“The more he’s perceived as pushing a British agenda, the more the Brexit-PTSD of the past years will come rushing back.”