Britain has embarked on a new era of co-operation with Europe at a summit where there was broad unity on a drive to protect borders against the “criminal empire” of migration gangs.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer made the comments at the European Political Community meeting at Blenheim Palace, as he welcomed continental leaders to Britain.
After eight years of turmoil caused by the Brexit vote to leave the EU, Britain appears to have been welcomed back into the European fold with the election of a new Labour government.
Irish PM
Whitehall sources have disclosed that Mr Starmer’s uncompromising defence of the European Convention on Human Rights – something that the Conservatives threatened to leave – has already made relations “much easier”.
A “tête-à-tête” dinner with President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday evening will also be the setting for a discussion on a new structure to tackle illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel.
Criminal empire
Addressing the opening meeting in which more than 40 countries were represented, Mr Starmer described Europe’s illegal immigration as a crisis.
“A criminal empire is at work in every country represented here today, profiting off human misery and desperation, prepared to send infants, babies, pregnant mothers, innocent people to their deaths,” he said.
The summit was an opportunity to “set a new path on illegal migration” and “to say together ‘no more’” to people smugglers.
But he also recognised that Europe needed to address the “root causes” that drove migrants from their homes, including extreme poverty, conflict and climate change.
In order to tackle the immigration problem at source, Mr Starmer announced £84 million ($108) million for skills and education projects across the Middle East and Africa.
“This is a vital part of gripping the migration crisis,” he told a press conference. “It shows how we are going to do business on world stage.”
The immigration problem demonstrated that the “world’s problems echo at home” and that Britain or Europe “could solve nothing by turning inward”.
The announcement came on the day of a migrant drowning and the rescue of 71 others in one failed crossing in which the asylum seekers were repatriated to France.
Soft Rwanda
The UK small boat issue has become intensely political with 45,000 crossing in 2022 followed by about 30,000 last year.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation scheme, which cost the taxpayer £270 million, was meant to act as a deterrent but was not introduced before he lost the election. The policy has since been dropped by Labour.
However, it is understood that Britain could be examining what observers call a “soft Rwanda” scheme, such as the one enacted between Italy and Albania.
Italy, which suffers some of the highest numbers of illegal migrants in Europe, has agreed with Albania on a scheme that will reportedly send 36,000 to a port north of the capital Tirana where migrant claims are processed. The majority so far have come from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ivory Coast and Tunisia.
Indications that this could evolve for Britain came after Mr Starmer held a meeting with the two countries’ prime ministers, Giorgia Meloni and Edi Rama.
There were also reports, denied by Labour, for an agreement for Britain to send back several small boat migrants in exchange for accepting some asylum seekers from Europe.
Royal welcome
The Italy-Albania meeting was among many that Mr Starmer held with Europe’s leaders who descended on Blenheim, outside Oxford.
British soft power diplomacy was to the fore as King Charles III hosted an hour-long reception for the leaders in the Baroque-style building where Winston Churchill was born and where his dynasty has held sway since the continental wars when the victorious commander John Churchill was made first Duke of Marlborough.
It is understood that the king recognised that the summit was “really important for the UK”, a source said, and that the monarch “personally has done a great deal on our relationships” with Europe.
Labour ‘game-changer’
The bonhomie was evident among the premiers, with even Hungary’s Viktor Orban warmly welcomed despite EU criticism of his recent trip to meet President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
The change in atmosphere was notably different from the inaugural EPC meeting in 2022 in the Czech Republic, a brainchild of President Macron in light of the Ukraine invasion when the former British leader Liz Truss was vague in her response on whether the Frenchman was “friend or foe”.
Ireland’s leader Simon Harris suggested that Mr Starmer’s election victory would be a “game-changer” for Britain’s relations with the EU in that he wanted a “closer relationship with Europe”.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, said Brussels would discuss a new security and defence pact. “We welcome the new tone of the British government and we look forward to engaging with it,” he said.
Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, spoke of a “new chapter of co-operation” with Britain on migration and global threats.
Freewheeling chat
The summit was touted as “leaders only” event with few officials involved in talks where there were no country flags, with most of the discussion in English and around hexagonal tables.
It saw three working groups on migration, security and preserving democracy, including further strong signals of support for Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also in attendance.
The EPC allowed Europe’s leaders to have “more freewheeling conversations”, a Whitehall source said, rather than the formality of other summits.
That talks led to such moments in the palace gardens in which the British, French, German and Ukrainian leaders discussed affairs unheard by officials.
