A pope’s funeral is a chance for world leaders to talk to each other face to face as if at a summit meeting. Many of these “informal” conversations will be choreographed by officials, logged in leaders’ schedules as “brush bys” and “bilats” (bilateral meetings), and for Keir Starmer they provide an unexpected opportunity to finalise negotiations with European leaders ahead of the EU-UK summit at Lancaster House on 19 May.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, let the cat out of the bag in an interview with the BBC in Washington on Friday, in effect admitting that the British government had given up on a US trade deal and was now focused on easing trade barriers with the EU instead.
I don’t think she meant her words to come out as they did, but what she said was: “I understand why there’s so much focus on our trading relationship with the US but actually our trading relationship with Europe is arguably even more important.”
She was referring to the hard fact that Britain does about twice as much trade with the EU as with the US, but the subtext was that she and Peter Mandelson, our ambassador, have despaired of getting a deal with the US signed before 19 May.
British officials are said to be uncertain about who speaks for the Trump administration, a house divided against itself and headed by a president who is liable to say one thing one day and the opposite the next.
For Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser, it must bring back memories of dealing with the George W Bush administration on the road to war in Iraq. The British thought that Colin Powell’s State Department, with whom they had good relations, was in charge, only to discover that Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was calling the shots. And the Trump court makes Bush’s presidency seem like a model of unity and purpose by comparison.
As I understand it, the US-UK deal is essentially done; it is waiting for the president to sign it off and nobody knows why he hasn’t. So Starmer, as Reeves did not quite say, has decided to let the chips fall where they may in the disordered White House, and to devote himself to conversations with European leaders who are more likely to do what they say they will do.
Not that the negotiations for the Lancaster House summit are going brilliantly. The only part of Starmer’s ambitious “reset” of EU-UK relations that is ready to be signed on 19 May is a security and defence pact. This is important, because it will give British arms companies the chance to bid for contracts with a new EU €150bn defence fund. But the other parts of the “reset” – a new post-Brexit trading deal, measures against illegal migration, an EU-UK youth mobility scheme and a better deal for touring musicians – will all be the subject of warm words in a communique, with the details to be sorted out later.
The Financial Times reports that Michael Ellam, Starmer’s envoy to Brussels, has refused even to agree to a draft of the communique until after 1 May, in order to avoid “interfering” with the English local elections on Thursday. Even though the outline of a deal on youth mobility seems to be ready to go, in which the numbers of EU participants would be matched by the numbers of British young people going to the EU, so that there is no effect on net immigration figures, Labour does not want to take the risk, on the eve of the elections, of advertising something that Nigel Farage will inevitably condemn as a step back towards EU free movement.
As for the attempt to reduce the friction in trade between Britain and the EU, the FT suggests that the wording of the communique is an opening “skirmish” in a negotiation that “will intensify in the autumn, with the aim of finalising a deal by the end of the year”.
It is said that France rejected “outright” Starmer’s proposal for common product standards that would have cut border checks, because that would give Britain access to the single market for nothing in return.
So the Pope’s funeral was a chance for Starmer to have a discussion with Emmanuel Macron, while they were waiting for the choir of the Sistine Chapel, about what the French would accept to make trade easier – and presumably about the possibility of a deal on small boats.
In recent weeks British and French officials have been in talks about France accepting people being deported from the UK in return for people accepted as refugees in France going the other way.
Starmer has repeatedly said that Britain does not have to choose between the US and the EU. Reeves’s unguarded words in Washington were a clue that he has in fact chosen, and made the obvious decision to prioritise the relationship with the EU. But the relationship is evolving only slowly, with the Lancaster House summit on 19 May only one talking shop among many.
There is a lot more talking to do, and the thing about funerals is that a lot of time is spent hanging around and talking.
