The Keir-miles are mounting fast. A leader whose previous experience of the world beyond Holborn and St Pancras and legal London was limited to human rights cases and holidays has embraced being a globe-trotting Prime Minister.
He is on his way to the G20 in Brazil, seeking a personal introduction to China’s Xi Jinping. Last week, his (large) delegation bustled past me at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where he laid out a plan to cut UK carbon emissions – a rare concrete commitment at the gathering as many other governments went missing in action, worried about Donald Trump, Azerbaijan’s questionable hosting credentials, or both.
Since taking office in July, Starmer has been to Washington and Berlin twice and Paris three times for summits and get-to-know-you chats. In between there have been appearances in Brussels, Rome and the UN General Assembly in New York, and more besides.
All this is a bullseye target for critics who say that he is fonder of globe-trotting than dealing with the grind of executing difficult reform plans and facing up to mounting tax rows at home.
Parochialism and an inward-turning trend across democracies means that foreign trips are easily lampooned as a distraction from his day job. As a frequent media observer at the “global moments”, I beg to differ.
The idea that COP summits and G20s are a pleasure for prime ministers is a fiction – flying is not a ton of fun when you do a lot of it, and especially when the journalists travelling with you want to ask about the........