What will Starmer’s fellow world leaders make of him at the Nato summit?

In Westminster, Sir Keir Starmer is still in the honeymoon period as Prime Minister. In Washington, where Starmer heads for the start of the Nato summit today, the welcome is likely to be somewhat less warm.

The new British team, made up of Starmer, foreign secretary David Lammy, defence secretary John Healey, and Nick Thomas-Symonds, now Cabinet Office minister in charge of ‘European relations’, will be greeted with courtesy and encouragement. But the red carpet won’t be rolled out: Nato leaders liked, rather than loathed, Rishi Sunak’s government. They felt him to be a man with whom they can do business. They will be eager to know if the same can be said for Starmer, a man who deliberately made his election strategy vague and anodyne. It’s true that the PM’s endlessly stated seriousness of purpose will be welcomed, but Nato leaders will want to know in real terms how British foreign and defence policy will change. Labour has committed to increasing military expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP, but has refused to promise a timescale. Hard questions will be asked of Starmer on this subject.

For Nato, there is little time for niceties. As I wrote in April, the alliance is facing challenging times. The conflict in Ukraine grinds on, and while Western support for president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues, and the Ukrainian armed forces are still fighting with both resolve and ingenuity against the invaders, there is no conclusion in sight. Most expect the war to extend at least into 2025. Dramatic victory for either side seems a remote possibility. Healey has already visited Ukraine, meeting Zelenskyy, and promised renewed British support including more artillery, ammunition and missiles. But the hoped-for moment of victory remains out of reach.

Nato is itself in a moment of potential transition. US president Joe Biden continues to face calls to end his candidacy for re-election in November, and his fellow leaders will all be aware that they could soon be dealing with Donald Trump in his stead. After the French parliamentary elections, president Emmanuel Macron has persuaded his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, to stay in post for a few days but a new council of ministers will have to be formed which has the support of the new National Assembly. Significantly, it is the swansong for Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who leaves office after ten years on 1 October. He will be replaced by former prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, a candidate to whom no-one objected but who lacks dynamism and vision.

Could this period of change present an opportunity for Starmer? A key plank of Labour’s international relations is a new security pact with the European Union; 21 of the EU’s 27 members are also in Nato but others, from the United States to Canada and Turkey, will want to understand how such an agreement would affect the UK’s commitment to the alliance and its security posture more generally. Here Starmer can reassure his fellow world leaders. But he must do so in a way that does not alienate voters back home.

The Washington summit offers Starmer some easy wins. He is striding the world stage as the newly appointed prime minister of the world’s sixth-largest economy, a G7 member and a nuclear power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. He will be photographed looking serious and being taken seriously by serious people, and at this stage in his premiership that is valuable.

But while the optics are good, progress in Washington is likely to be limited. There are few opportunities for major decisions or breakthroughs, and the meet-and-greet aspect will represent Starmer’s biggest achievement. He and his ministers should, however, think ahead and lay the groundwork with allies now for decisions they will take over the next six to nine months. Nato remains the foundation of the UK’s national security but it is a complex web of relationships. This is where Starmer must carry out the ‘delivery and service’ of which he has spoken so much.

Major international summits like this week’s gathering are always a combination of form and function. It is an invaluable opportunity for Starmer and his national security team to meet global counterparts in an official setting: he has already encountered many of them, but now he carries the imprimatur and responsibility of the premiership. That makes a difference. Starmer can move from ‘I would…’ to ‘I will…’. Likewise, Lammy, Healey and Thomas-Symonds are now holders of high office and will have the support of the civil service when they meet fellow ministers. And we saw at the D-Day commemorations which Rishi Sunak abandoned that Starmer knows the value of photo opportunities.