Starmer’s
top aide made low-key Brussels trip as No 10’s EU reset efforts continue
Morgan
McSweeney met EU counterparts before Christmas as Downing Street poised to hire
new foreign adviser
Pippa Crerar
Political editor
Fri 10 Jan
2025 18.00 GMT
Keir
Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, made a below-the-radar trip to
Brussels last month, as No 10 prepares to appoint its own foreign affairs
adviser to help bolster the Downing Street policy operation.
As the UK’s
attempts at a “reset” with the EU continue behind closed doors, No 10’s most
senior aide made the trip to meet counterparts in Brussels before Christmas.
Starmer
appears to have significantly stepped up diplomacy with France since taking
office; his meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, this week was
their seventh since July.
At the
dinner hosted by Starmer at his Chequers country retreat, No 10 said the prime
minister had “updated” Macron on the reset with the EU, as well as discussing
small boat crossings, Ukraine, the Middle East, growth, defence, security, AI
and energy.
Macron said
the meeting was “a great opportunity” to discuss EU-UK relations and “the main
crisis” in Ukraine.
Downing
Street insiders acknowledge that negotiations with the EU have so far been very
secretive. “Our guy prefers that private meetings remain private rather than
trying to use the media as a tool during negotiations,” a No 10 source said,
highlighting the contrast with previous Conservative administrations.
McSweeney
previously took a trip to meet Donald Trump’s team in Florida and Washington,
showing he is playing an instrumental part in No 10’s foreign policy agenda
rather than focusing on domestic politics.
Allies also
say McSweeney is aware of his lack of experience of foreign affairs since
taking over the chief of staff role.
It is
understood Downing Street is about to appoint a new senior foreign affairs
adviser to replace the academic and historian John Bew, who worked under Boris
Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak but left after Labour came to power.
The
government is also recruiting a representative for talks with the EU, who will
in effect be a senior civil servant working for Nick Thomas-Symonds, the
Cabinet Office minister in charge of EU relations, but will also work closely
with No 10.
Whitehall
sources said the government is aiming for smoother trade with the EU with the
goal of boosting growth but said Labour’s manifesto pledge not to go back into
the single market or customs union was clear and would not be broken.
Senior No 10
figures also rule out a full youth mobility pact, which the EU has been pushing
for, but suggest the UK could agree to an Erasmus-style scheme. They
acknowledged that this is not ideally what the EU would like to see because it
would be for students, rather than young workers. But the principal of one-year
university exchanges is potentially on the table
One
government source said No 10 was clear it had promised to bring down net
migration and legal migration, adding: “We can’t then say we’ll bring in a load
of Bulgarian builders to construct the houses we need.”
The
government also believes it can have improved relations on defence, energy and
trade but there will be “no surprises” in the deal.
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