LONDON ¨C Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain will barely get his feet under the desk in No. 10 Downing St. before he flies to Washington this coming week to attend a NATO summit. A week after that, he will play host to 50 European leaders at a security meeting at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
It¡¯s a crash course in global statecraft for Starmer, Britain¡¯s first Labour prime minister in 14 years. But it will also give him the chance to project an image of Britain that is uncharacteristic in the post-Brexit era: a stable, conventional, center-left country amid a churning tide of politically unsettled allies.
In Washington, Starmer will encounter President Joe Biden, who is resisting calls to abandon his race for re-election because of age-related decline. He will meet with President Emmanuel Macron, whose attempt to fend off the far right in France appears to have backfired, and with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, whose coalition has been weakened by the advance of the hard right in European Parliament elections.
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