Starmer had a successful NATO summit but it will only get harder when he arrives home

Sir Keir Starmer has wrapped his first NATO summit just a week since that exit poll dropped predicting his landslide majority.

It has been a whirlwind start, but the prime minister and his team are leaving NATO content that their objectives were met.

The trip had two main aims: the first was for Sir Keir and other leading cabinet figures to carry out some speed-dating diplomacy.

The second was for the new administration to set out their foreign policy priorities around Russia, Ukraine, Europe.

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As the trip drew to a close one senior government figure told me that it had been “great” to have so many leaders here in the first full week of Starmer’s term.

They said: “It’s short-cut a process that could otherwise have taken months to get around everyone and meant we could make the most of the momentum coming out of the election and, while there was maximum interest in the PM, to raise all the strategic issues we wanted to and reset from our predecessors.”

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Continuity and change

In this, there was both continuity and change.

When it comes to NATO and Ukraine, Sir Keir is all about continuity, re-committing to the £3bn a year of funding already promised, while also urging NATO allies to lift defence spending over time.

In his closing remarks, Sir Keir told NATO allies: “In light of the grave threats to our security, we must go further”.

He urged allies to lift spending to 2.5% of GDP as he reiterated his pledge to “set out a clear path” to get the UK there.

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He hasn’t, however, said when, telling me in an interview earlier today: “What would be unserious would be simply to pick an arbitrary date.”

Refusal to pick ‘arbitrary date’

How Sir Keir squares a “commitment that we will reach” the 2.5% without pinning it to his first term of government seems a contradiction.

If he intends to reach the target, he has to make good on the pledge in his first term, and I suspect this will be a theme that keeps running through his defence review and his premiership if he refuses to commit in the first term of office.

It also somewhat undermines his overtures to fellow allies.

But where there is change is over Europe, with the new administration keen to shake off Brexit baggage and reset relations with EU partners after a tense few years between successive Conservative prime ministers and other European capitals over the decision to leave the EU and its execution.

Desire to deepen EU relations

Sir Keir wants to deepen trade, security and defence ties with European neighbours and viewed this summit as an opportunity to kickstart that work, bringing with him his minister for European affairs and his foreign secretary, David Lammy.

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I asked him if his “Remain” status was a benefit to fellow EU leaders who did not like Brexit.

He said it was all about “a reset of our relations, not actually about an institutional reset” as he confirmed he will not try to get the UK back into the EU.

“There was a sense after Brexit that the UK has become too inward looking,” he added.

“The UK is back, it’s confident. We want to play our part on the world stage.

But on the edges of this summit, the PM talked about issues back home – the prisons crisis being the top of his in-tray, with an announcement coming as early as today outlining how the government will tackle the acute shortage of prison places.

As one of the No 10 team put it to me: “We’re well aware this is the honeymoon.”

It’s only going to get harder when they get home.

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