For a politician who has usually avoided high-flown rhetoric, Keir Starmer is suddenly sounding remarkably ambitious. As he addressed the House of Commons after last week’s king’s speech, he said his government’s aim was “nothing less than national renewal”. But there was an even bigger story he wanted to tell, aimed not just at hard-right Tories and the chancers of Reform UK, but their political soulmates across the world. At that point, Donald Trump had just survived an assassination attempt and Joe Biden was still clinging on to his declining hopes of another presidential term, and it seemed as if Starmer wanted to do his bit to fill the moral breach: his government’s agenda, the Labour leader said, represented “a rejection, in this complicated and volatile world, of those who can only offer the easy answer – the snake-oil charm of populism”.
Over the past seven days, two very different elements of the news have highlighted what this means and the daunting challenge Starmer faces. For the moment, a lot of domestic headlines are focused on his government’s opening array of policies and the fact that they highlight – within cramped financial limits – its energised and purposeful approach to power. Last week’s meeting of the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace saw ministers enthusiastically reconnecting with our old friends in the EU, and gave Starmer an opportunity to reaffirm Britain’s commitment to the European convention on human rights and international law.
But developments in the US threaten to drown all that out. With Biden having finally seen sense, it would be nice to think that Trump’s bandaged-and-exultant phase is now over. But the sense of America’s democratic institutions and social bonds – not to mention its support for Ukraine – feeling frail and imperilled will........