Internationalism is now a defining feature – and promise – of Labour’s government. At the UN General Assembly yesterday, Keir Starmer delivered a clear and unambiguous message: Britain is ready to work as an equal partner with other countries to deal with global warming, war and the threat to the rule of international law. He was there to combat the “fatalism” he fears now grips the international community.
He offered a hopeful, but apologetic message. “I think the international system can be better. We need it to be better,” he said. “[We must move on] from the paternalism of the past towards [the] partnership for the future.” Britain’s paternalism, that is. You got the sense he was more comfortable giving a speech at the United Nations than at the Labour conference. This is a man steeped in international law. He still remembers reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a student at university. “It had a profound impact on me,” he told the sparse audience in the drab, space-ship-like General Assembly hall. Let us not forget that Starmer wrote an 883-page book on EU human rights law.
The UN General Assembly’s “high-level” week dominates the diplomatic calendar. Each countries’ leader delivers a speech. Starmer spoke after the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and before Nepal’s KP Sharma Oli. (Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray, and several other No 10 aides, watched from the sidelines beside the Nepalese delegation.) Britain’s permanent seat on the Security Council means the UN is one last institution where its voice matters. This was an opportunity for this fresh, unknown Prime Minister to reset other countries’ perception of the UK.
Starmer reeled off the key planks of Labour’s foreign policy: respect for the developing world, a defence of the rule of law, a belief that what happens abroad affects Britons at home. The latter also applies in reverse: the way Britain is governed at home will impact its reputation abroad. Starmer’s top team think climate change is a key area for Britain to take the lead, hence Starmer making sure to slip into his speech a recommitment to delivering clean energy by 2030 and that Labour has revoked the onshore wind ban.
Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have been in sync all week. Lammy has been here since Monday, when he proclaimed at the Security Council, wielding the UN Charter in his hand and locking eyes with the Russian representative, that he knew imperialism when he saw it because his ancestors had been slaves. It was a passionate, personal declaration which announced his arrival on the international stage. He lambasted Russia as a “mafia state” which was hungry for a “mafia empire”. The Prime Minister was equally severe at the Council, accusing Russia of treating its citizens like “bits of meat to fling into the grinder”.
Both think the main problem with Putin’s invasion is its illegality under international law. Both defended the international system and the UN Charter from violation. Starmer’s speech at the General Assembly took this a step further: he was making a pitch for Britain to return to a position of global leadership. He wants to do that by “listening a lot more, speaking a bit less, offering game-changing British expertise and working together in the spirit of equal respect”.
Such words don’t guarantee success. Speeches, however empathetic, don’t magic up power. And that’s the reality this new Prime Minister must now confront.
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