{"id":96884,"date":"2024-07-18T07:37:10","date_gmt":"2024-07-18T07:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/18\/keir-starmer-gears-up-for-another-set-piece-moment\/"},"modified":"2024-07-18T07:37:10","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T07:37:10","slug":"keir-starmer-gears-up-for-another-set-piece-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/18\/keir-starmer-gears-up-for-another-set-piece-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer gears up for another set-piece moment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Keir<\/div>


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Another day, another set-piece moment for the new prime minister.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir Starmer will complete a hat-trick of made-for-the-cameras events in just a week, when he hosts a gathering of more than 40 European leaders in Oxfordshire today.<\/p>\n

Its just a day after the parliamentary pageantry of the King\u2019s Speech and a week after the Nato summit and his visit to the White House in Washington.<\/p>\n

So what do those moments tell us about the new government – and the new PM?<\/p>\n

Back at Westminster, the new-look House of Commons (remember, more than half the new MPs are novices, just elected this month) will begin digesting the King\u2019s Speech.<\/p>\n

It amounted to a hefty set of plans from a government with a large majority.<\/p>\n

It is a government in a hurry too, keen to capitalise on the momentum of their win less than a fortnight ago, by cracking on at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

Political parties all carry folk memories, collective reflections of past perceived mistakes and a desire to avoid repeating them.<\/p>\n

Some from the New Labour era in the late 1990s feel, with hindsight, Sir Tony Blair didn\u2019t do as much as he could have done when his political powers were at their greatest.<\/p>\n

They are determined that mistake, as they see it, isn\u2019t repeated.<\/p>\n

And so we saw the longest speech from the monarch<\/a> at a State Opening of Parliament for 20 years and one of the longest since the Second World War.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth reflecting that there is more to governing than legislating, and even powerful governments can get sidetracked.<\/p>\n

But the scale of Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s win at the election means we should assume most of the ideas will actually happen.<\/p>\n

The era of small majorities, big rebellions and ideas going wobbly very quickly may well be over, for now at least.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir has the opportunity to begin to mould the country in his image, as he embraces a more interventionist, muscular state and a leftward political tilt \u2013 take the idea of the railways returning to public ownership, for instance.<\/p>\n

But to state the obvious and they know this \u2013 the hard work starts now for the government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The paegentry in Westminster was bookended by events on the international stage.<\/p>\n

Two of these three events \u2013 the trip to the Nato summit and the EPC \u2013 were in the diary anyway, for whoever was in government, but as a trio of commitments they amount to very useful stages from which a newbie government can try to establish itself.<\/p>\n

Today’s summit is a meeting of the relatively new European Political Community, or EPC, taking place at the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, Blenheim Palace.<\/p>\n

It is an informal club of countries, some in the European Union and plenty, like the UK, which are not.<\/p>\n

Countries take it in turns to host its get togethers, and as luck would have it for Sir Keir, it is the UK\u2019s go.<\/p>\n

The prime minister is talking up what he calls a \u201creset\u201d with Europe, with border security at its heart.<\/p>\n

Ministers hope that the new government\u2019s commitment to remaining within the European Convention on Human Rights, which some Conservatives flirted with abandoning, will open up the prospect of discussions with some countries such as Germany which didn\u2019t happen before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sir Keir faces domestic criticism from the Tories that he has abandoned their idea of sending some people arriving on small boats to Rwanda.<\/p>\n

He will argue that he is already redeploying more than 100 Home Office staff from the Rwanda scheme to what is being called a “rapid returns unit” to help secure the UK\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n

Then there is the question of Ukraine, and European security \u2013 particularly in the context of the prospect of a second presidential term for Donald Trump in the United States.<\/p>\n

His pick for vice president were he to win, JD Vance, said days before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that he \u201cdoesn\u2019t really care what happens\u201d there \u201cone way or the other.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

It poses big questions for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, for Nato and for European security \u2013 all topics for today\u2019s gathering.<\/p>\n

This week the PM has the chance to set the tone for his government on the domestic front – and on the international stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cChange\u201d is one of the most powerful words in politics and Labour very successfully harnessed it in the general election campaign.<\/p>\n

But it’s one thing promising it. Another actually making it happen, however many set piece moments your opening fortnight in office serves up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Another day, another set-piece moment for the new prime minister. Sir Keir Starmer will complete a hat-trick of made-for-the-cameras events in just a week, when he hosts a gathering of more than 40 European leaders in Oxfordshire today. Its just a day after the parliamentary pageantry of the King\u2019s Speech and a week after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/63ac\/live\/6a61f4d0-44a2-11ef-a479-33ff75fb3705.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[13559,3959,5794,82057,3960],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96886,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96884\/revisions\/96886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}