Keir Starmer’s EU summit turns into another headache

LONDON — Keir Starmer wants to forge a closer relationship between Britain and the EU. So far, nobody’s thanking him for it.

Brussels is playing hard-to-get, U.K. lawmakers have accused the government of “waffle,” and Starmer himself could be out of the job before his moment rolls around.

The plan is to use a summit scheduled for the summer to sign up to more EU rules — with the aim of bringing economic benefits to Britain’s sputtering economy.

But despite talking up the meeting for the last six months, most recently in a make-or-break speech following a disastrous set of local election results, it still has no set date.

Meanwhile, challengers from Starmer’s own party — popular regional mayor Andy Burnham and ambitious former Health Secretary Wes Streeting — are making their moves against him.

With the summit supposedly penciled in for late June or early July, the political timebomb ticking away under Downing Street isn’t making question of Britain’s future relationship with Europe any easier.

U.K. officials, granted anonymity to discuss the talks, reject reports the meeting could be postponed and say the plan on timings hasn’t changed.

“It’s just difficult to align world leaders and agree a date,” one said, adding that diary teams in London and Brussels were currently “playing footsie” with different days.

But with a sweltering May fast turning into June, the lack of a date is starting to raise eyebrows — and questions about the state of the reset.

The political uncertainty

“A few weeks ago I was told it would definitely happen in late June, but that no longer seems to be the case,” Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform think tank said.

He speculated that issues finalizing open negotiating files — meant to be finished by the summer meeting — could be behind a delay. The U.K.’s EU Relations Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds last month said talks were going to plan and on some files were ahead of schedule.

One person in Brussels with an eye on preparations for the meeting told POLITICO the political uncertainty in the U.K. wasn’t helping matters.

But it’s not just the meeting’s date that’s difficult to pin down: With, at best, under two months to go, it’s still not entirely clear what will be on the agenda.

Lawmakers will use the gathering to sign off some of the agreements teed up at last year’s summit, notably a deal on agrifoods and visas for young people to live abroad.

But Starmer and his finance chief Rachel Reeves have both said they want to use this year’s meeting to expand negotiations and bring the British economy more tightly back into the EU’s orbit.

Yet they’ve given few details other than that they’re prepared to align with EU rules in some — as yet unnamed — sectors. Starmer is also sticking by Labour’s manifesto red lines on joining a customs union or accepting EU freedom of movement, limiting his room for maneuver significantly.

The first signs aren’t exactly encouraging. EU officials have privately rebuffed one proposal by U.K. negotiators that Britain be allowed to join the EU single market for goods only — without signing up to free movement of people. U.K. officials say the plan is just one of a number being considered.

‘Evasive and waffly’

British lawmakers are also frustrated at the lack of detail from their government.

The U.K. parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee last week accused ministers of being “evasive and waffly,” with its chair, Labour’s Emily Thornberry, declaring that the government “has been unwilling to provide clarity about its approach or acknowledge trade-offs, hiding behind generalities, shifting positions and vague ambitions.”

In Brussels, one senior EU official wondered aloud earlier this month: “How revolutionary can it be without revisiting their red lines?”

Jannike Wachowiak, a researcher at the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, said the two sides could be heading for a stand-off.

“On the EU side, there’s a bit of a wait-and-see perspective at the moment, because they don’t quite know where the U.K. is going politically,” she said Tuesday.

“I think there we’ve got a real risk that there might be some sort of standoff between the two sides. It depends also on who’s in charge on the U.K. side but … I think there’s a risk that the U.K. comes in with some very ambitious but unrealistic proposals, and that the EU isn’t particularly interested, and that the summit reveals those tensions.”