The prime minister is to be congratulated on his clear-sighted speech to the Munich Security Conference. In unscripted remarks referring to questions about his leadership at home, he claimed that he had “ended the week much stronger than I started it”. If that is true, let us hope that he has the strength to deliver the closer cooperation with our European neighbours of which he spoke so eloquently.
The speech struck the right balance between resisting the bullying bluster of Donald Trump and acknowledging that Europe needs to do more to secure its own defence. Sir Keir Starmer reminded his audience that Nato members had defended each other’s sovereignty on the issue of Greenland. He reminded President Trump, again, that Nato members had come to the aid of the United States in Afghanistan – “at terrible cost to many in my country”.
But he also spoke of the need for “greater European autonomy”, while saying that it “does not herald US withdrawal, but answers the call for more burden-sharing in full, and remakes the ties that have served us so well”.
His warning of the threat of Vladimir Putin’s aggression may have been a little hyperbolic for some tastes. Sir Keir said: “In the 1930s, leaders were too slow to level with the public about the fundamental shift in mindset that was required.” That is true, and there is a similar absence of urgency today, but it is unwise to make comparisons with the Nazis.
President Putin is bad enough – as the evidence presented about the murder of Alexei Navalny confirmed – but he is not Hitler, and he does not pose a direct military threat to most European nations. Such exaggerations risk undermining, rather than reinforcing, the argument for higher defence spending that Sir Keir was right to make.
Sir Keir was justified in warning that “the peddlers of easy answers are ready on the extremes of left and right”, although it was evidence of weakness rather than strength that he used his platform in Munich to attack the Green Party and Reform for being “soft on Russia and weak on Nato”.
Better to make the case for stronger European defence, and to let the British people make up their own minds about how serious Zack Polanski and Nigel Farage are about addressing it.
The bulk of the speech made a good argument for greater European defence cooperation. Indeed, Sir Keir’s speechwriter should be commended for resolutely avoiding the usual clichés. “To break the convention of a thousand speeches,” the prime minister said, “we are not at a crossroads today – the road ahead is straight and it is clear.”
He called for “a generational shift in defence industrial cooperation”, and said that “this includes looking again at closer economic alignment”. He is absolutely right that Britain should be closer to the European Union on both defence and economics, and indeed on the economics of the defence industry. As he said, “The prize here is greater security, stronger growth for the UK and the EU, which will fuel increased defence spending, and the chance to place the UK at the centre of a wave of European industrial renewal.”
This has implications for domestic politics, of course. As Sir Keir also said, “We are not the Britain of the Brexit years any more. Because we know that, in a dangerous world, we would not take control by turning inward – we would surrender it.”
But it would be a mistake to try to reopen the arguments of the EU referendum 10 years later. Sir Keir was right to focus most of his speech on making the positive case for closer European cooperation – and to let his domestic audience draw its own conclusions.
