Starmer will struggle to keep both the EU and US happy

We do not have to make a choice between our alliance with the United States and closer relations with the European Union: that was the message of the Prime Minister’s traditional annual speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall. Sir Keir Starmer called the supposed binary ‘plain wrong’, and prayed in aid some of his most illustrious predecessors.

I reject it utterly. Attlee did not choose between allies. Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both.

He described the ‘special relationship’ with the United States in profound terms, written ‘in the ink of shared sacrifice… in Normandy, Flanders and around the world’, and reminded his audience that the two nations were intimately interconnected in economics and technology, in research and development and in defence and intelligence. He went on to blame the Conservative government for turning away from Europe and described his ‘reset’ of relations with the EU as ‘on any objective assessment… vital for our growth and security’.