When Sir Keir Starmer meets Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of Nato, in Brussels today he will be the first Labour leader to do so for more than a decade.
For Starmer it represents a watershed moment as he seeks to re-establish Labour as the party of national security in the image of Ernest Bevin, the Labour foreign secretary and staunch anti-communist whose vision of a transatlantic alliance led to Nato.
He says his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch critic of Nato who eschewed the principle of collective defence, was wrong — wrong on Nato and emphatically wrong on the Salisbury poisonings for refusing to hold Russia responsible.
“What was said by my predecessor in relation to issues like Salisbury was wrong. I spoke out at the time,” he said in an interview with The Times.
“The important thing was not then but now. This is very clearly me reasserting our position on Nato, and intentionally so. It isn’t a new position for the Labour Party because we have always been the party of Nato.
“The message is that we are firm and united in our support for Nato, that we are reasserting Labour’s history and tradition — the Bevin tradition — of the Labour Party, and making it very, very clear that we don’t just see that as part of our history and tradition. It’s part of our values, as relevant today as it’s ever been.”
On Ukraine, Starmer said that it was “very difficult to find a dividing point” between Labour and the government. He supports plans to deploy more troops to the region and praised Ben Wallace, the defence secretary.
“He’s certainly acted in the spirit of cross-party unity on this,” he said. “I’m absolutely convinced that among the tools in the Russian armoury is divide, divide, divide. The more they sow division, either between us and our allies or within [the] country, then only Russia benefits from that.”
But Boris Johnson, he said, was being mocked on the international stage: “His authority has been diminished because of the various activities over the last few months.
“I’m struck by the fact that almost every time he does a press conference abroad among the first questions are about his authority in his own country, his authority on the world stage.
“That should never be the first question of a British prime minister of any political party. It wouldn’t have been in the past. I can’t think of an example of a previous prime minister, Tory or Labour, who has had those sorts of questions asked. Mocking questions.”
He is not hopeful a crisis on Ukraine’s border can be averted, adding that he “can’t see a landing place for the talks and I’m therefore very concerned about the situation, as everybody is”.
Starmer said that he would reverse the government’s plans to axe 9,000 soldiers and 79 tanks from the army after a “decade of decline” in the armed forces.
He was returning from a briefing in the Ministry of Defence on Ukraine on Monday when he was assailed by anti-vaxxers branding him a “paedophile protector” and yelling “Jimmy Savile”.
Starmer was bundled into a car by the Metropolitan Police. “I cannot thank the police enough for the protection they gave me,” he said. “They did a fantastic job in making me feel safe.”
The protests came a week after Johnson accused Starmer, when he was director of public prosecutions, of failing to prosecute Savile. The accusation provoked uproar in the Conservative Party, prompting Munira Mirza, the prime minister’s policy chief, to quit and leading to public condemnation by Tory MPs.
Johnson, however, has refused to apologise, insisting that he was referring to Starmer’s overarching responsibility as director of public prosecutions rather than any personal involvement in the Savile case.
Does Starmer think that the mob that attacked him was fuelled by Johnson’s accusation? “I have never been called a paedophile protector before,” he said. “That happened yesterday for the first time in my life. If others want to argue that this is unconnected with precisely what the PM said one week before then let them make that case. But they’ll never persuade me that there is no link.”
Johnson’s allies have defended his comments as part of the cut and thrust of political debate. Starmer believes it crossed a threshold, however. “It was a deliberate slur without any basis in fact,” he said. “The PM knew exactly what he was doing. It is a conspiracy theory of violent fascists that has been doing the rounds for some time. I don’t think he will apologise. It’s not about me, it’s the way we conduct our politics. I don’t want to see us go down the route that this potentially takes us down.”
Starmer said he was “heartened” by the fact that many Tory MPs agreed with him. “I’ve been really struck by how many have gone public in their criticism and many of them have reached out to me personally to say how much they disagree with what the PM has done here. I’m grateful for that.”
He singled out Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary, for praise after they refused to endorse the prime minister’s comments. Both had demonstrated “moral courage”, he said: “He [Sunak] did the right thing. Sajid Javid as well.”
Starmer was concerned about the safety of MPs, highlighting the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess. “We’ve had two murders in the last seven years,” he said. “We all have a responsibility to ensure that we conduct ourselves in a way which minimises the risk to all politicians.”
Starmer said that he had had no involvement in the decision not to prosecute Savile in 2009, and was not aware of it until after his death. “I wasn’t involved in the decision. I knew nothing about the decision. When Savile died I instigated a review to audit whether any cases had come across the desk of any CPS officers and discovered at that stage decisions had been made.” There had been, he said, a “system failure”.
“I was flagging what I wanted to see change in the criminal justice system and I changed it. I knew nothing about the decisions at the time.”
Starmer has called for the prime minister to resign. This week’s mini reshuffle, he said, would make little difference. “There’s a criminal investigation into a sitting prime minister and there’s a long way to go because that investigation will have to come to a conclusion. And the Sue Gray report will have to come to a conclusion. There’s 500 pages of statements and evidence and 300 photographs. There’s a long way to run on this.”
Johnson, he said, had lost moral authority at a time of crisis. “You’ve had three or four months of a prime minister distracted from the issues of the day, spending all his time and energy saving his own job,” he said. “Meantime energy bills are going up, inflation is going up, wages are not going up. And tax is about to hit people really hard in April. The prime minister has no grip at all.”
Ernest Bevin was the foreign secretary who, under the newly elected Labour government led by Clement Attlee, signed up to Nato in April 1949. In the immediate postwar years he carved out a role for Britain as a staunch ally of America in the Cold War against the USSR (Larisa Brown writes).
Bevin was a staunch anticommunist who fervently believed that the survival of the West depended on a union between western Europe and the United States, according to Nato’s own history of the alliance.
After the announcement of the Marshall Plan in 1947 — a US scheme providing aid to western Europe after the Second World War’s devastation — Bevin was keen to show the Americans that the Europeans were prepared to defend themselves and unite to reduce the risk of another conflict.
The next year the UK, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed the Brussels Pact, which committed them to come to one another’s defence in the event of an attack. The pact also served as a signal to America as a means of persuading them to be part of an alliance. The principle of collective defence became the heart of the future North Atlantic Treaty, which formed the basis of what became known as Nato.
>He says his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch critic of Nato who eschewed the principle of collective defence, was wrong — wrong on Nato and emphatically wrong on the Salisbury poisonings for refusing to hold Russia responsible.
Ah yes Jeremy “let the Russians test the samples” Corbyn. I dread to think what damage he would be doing to the Labour party at the moment is he was still in charge, probably suggesting Russian Peace Keepers in Eastern Ukraine.
> Johnson’s allies have defended his comments as part of the cut and thrust of political debate.
While bitterly complaining for weeks with their chums in the papers like this one about any and all criticism of their actions as unfair and too personal.
Bunch of fucking hypocritical liars and cheats.
I’m not dying for Ukraine, lol. Russia’s not going to invade it – but even if it did – I’m not standing side by side with Ukranian ultranationalists.
4 comments
When Sir Keir Starmer meets Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of Nato, in Brussels today he will be the first Labour leader to do so for more than a decade.
For Starmer it represents a watershed moment as he seeks to re-establish Labour as the party of national security in the image of Ernest Bevin, the Labour foreign secretary and staunch anti-communist whose vision of a transatlantic alliance led to Nato.
He says his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch critic of Nato who eschewed the principle of collective defence, was wrong — wrong on Nato and emphatically wrong on the Salisbury poisonings for refusing to hold Russia responsible.
“What was said by my predecessor in relation to issues like Salisbury was wrong. I spoke out at the time,” he said in an interview with The Times.
“The important thing was not then but now. This is very clearly me reasserting our position on Nato, and intentionally so. It isn’t a new position for the Labour Party because we have always been the party of Nato.
“The message is that we are firm and united in our support for Nato, that we are reasserting Labour’s history and tradition — the Bevin tradition — of the Labour Party, and making it very, very clear that we don’t just see that as part of our history and tradition. It’s part of our values, as relevant today as it’s ever been.”
On Ukraine, Starmer said that it was “very difficult to find a dividing point” between Labour and the government. He supports plans to deploy more troops to the region and praised Ben Wallace, the defence secretary.
“He’s certainly acted in the spirit of cross-party unity on this,” he said. “I’m absolutely convinced that among the tools in the Russian armoury is divide, divide, divide. The more they sow division, either between us and our allies or within [the] country, then only Russia benefits from that.”
But Boris Johnson, he said, was being mocked on the international stage: “His authority has been diminished because of the various activities over the last few months.
“I’m struck by the fact that almost every time he does a press conference abroad among the first questions are about his authority in his own country, his authority on the world stage.
“That should never be the first question of a British prime minister of any political party. It wouldn’t have been in the past. I can’t think of an example of a previous prime minister, Tory or Labour, who has had those sorts of questions asked. Mocking questions.”
He is not hopeful a crisis on Ukraine’s border can be averted, adding that he “can’t see a landing place for the talks and I’m therefore very concerned about the situation, as everybody is”.
Starmer said that he would reverse the government’s plans to axe 9,000 soldiers and 79 tanks from the army after a “decade of decline” in the armed forces.
He was returning from a briefing in the Ministry of Defence on Ukraine on Monday when he was assailed by anti-vaxxers branding him a “paedophile protector” and yelling “Jimmy Savile”.
Starmer was bundled into a car by the Metropolitan Police. “I cannot thank the police enough for the protection they gave me,” he said. “They did a fantastic job in making me feel safe.”
The protests came a week after Johnson accused Starmer, when he was director of public prosecutions, of failing to prosecute Savile. The accusation provoked uproar in the Conservative Party, prompting Munira Mirza, the prime minister’s policy chief, to quit and leading to public condemnation by Tory MPs.
Johnson, however, has refused to apologise, insisting that he was referring to Starmer’s overarching responsibility as director of public prosecutions rather than any personal involvement in the Savile case.
Does Starmer think that the mob that attacked him was fuelled by Johnson’s accusation? “I have never been called a paedophile protector before,” he said. “That happened yesterday for the first time in my life. If others want to argue that this is unconnected with precisely what the PM said one week before then let them make that case. But they’ll never persuade me that there is no link.”
Johnson’s allies have defended his comments as part of the cut and thrust of political debate. Starmer believes it crossed a threshold, however. “It was a deliberate slur without any basis in fact,” he said. “The PM knew exactly what he was doing. It is a conspiracy theory of violent fascists that has been doing the rounds for some time. I don’t think he will apologise. It’s not about me, it’s the way we conduct our politics. I don’t want to see us go down the route that this potentially takes us down.”
Starmer said he was “heartened” by the fact that many Tory MPs agreed with him. “I’ve been really struck by how many have gone public in their criticism and many of them have reached out to me personally to say how much they disagree with what the PM has done here. I’m grateful for that.”
He singled out Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary, for praise after they refused to endorse the prime minister’s comments. Both had demonstrated “moral courage”, he said: “He [Sunak] did the right thing. Sajid Javid as well.”
Starmer was concerned about the safety of MPs, highlighting the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess. “We’ve had two murders in the last seven years,” he said. “We all have a responsibility to ensure that we conduct ourselves in a way which minimises the risk to all politicians.”
Starmer said that he had had no involvement in the decision not to prosecute Savile in 2009, and was not aware of it until after his death. “I wasn’t involved in the decision. I knew nothing about the decision. When Savile died I instigated a review to audit whether any cases had come across the desk of any CPS officers and discovered at that stage decisions had been made.” There had been, he said, a “system failure”.
“I was flagging what I wanted to see change in the criminal justice system and I changed it. I knew nothing about the decisions at the time.”
Starmer has called for the prime minister to resign. This week’s mini reshuffle, he said, would make little difference. “There’s a criminal investigation into a sitting prime minister and there’s a long way to go because that investigation will have to come to a conclusion. And the Sue Gray report will have to come to a conclusion. There’s 500 pages of statements and evidence and 300 photographs. There’s a long way to run on this.”
Johnson, he said, had lost moral authority at a time of crisis. “You’ve had three or four months of a prime minister distracted from the issues of the day, spending all his time and energy saving his own job,” he said. “Meantime energy bills are going up, inflation is going up, wages are not going up. And tax is about to hit people really hard in April. The prime minister has no grip at all.”
Ernest Bevin was the foreign secretary who, under the newly elected Labour government led by Clement Attlee, signed up to Nato in April 1949. In the immediate postwar years he carved out a role for Britain as a staunch ally of America in the Cold War against the USSR (Larisa Brown writes).
Bevin was a staunch anticommunist who fervently believed that the survival of the West depended on a union between western Europe and the United States, according to Nato’s own history of the alliance.
After the announcement of the Marshall Plan in 1947 — a US scheme providing aid to western Europe after the Second World War’s devastation — Bevin was keen to show the Americans that the Europeans were prepared to defend themselves and unite to reduce the risk of another conflict.
The next year the UK, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed the Brussels Pact, which committed them to come to one another’s defence in the event of an attack. The pact also served as a signal to America as a means of persuading them to be part of an alliance. The principle of collective defence became the heart of the future North Atlantic Treaty, which formed the basis of what became known as Nato.
>He says his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch critic of Nato who eschewed the principle of collective defence, was wrong — wrong on Nato and emphatically wrong on the Salisbury poisonings for refusing to hold Russia responsible.
Ah yes Jeremy “let the Russians test the samples” Corbyn. I dread to think what damage he would be doing to the Labour party at the moment is he was still in charge, probably suggesting Russian Peace Keepers in Eastern Ukraine.
> Johnson’s allies have defended his comments as part of the cut and thrust of political debate.
While bitterly complaining for weeks with their chums in the papers like this one about any and all criticism of their actions as unfair and too personal.
Bunch of fucking hypocritical liars and cheats.
I’m not dying for Ukraine, lol. Russia’s not going to invade it – but even if it did – I’m not standing side by side with Ukranian ultranationalists.