Starmer Slammed For Rant To Europe About Reform And Greens

Keir Starmer has been criticised for ranting about his domestic political rivals, the Greens and Reform UK, to European allies at an international summit.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the prime minister alluded to the “peddlers of easy answers” who sit “on the extremes of left and right” in a bleak warning.

He said: “It’s striking that the different ends of the spectrum share so much. Soft on Russia. Weak on Nato. If not outright opposed. And determined to sacrifice the relationship we need on the altar of their ideology.”

He told his allies to “stand up and fight” for their values to avoid a future of “division and then capitulation”.

Asked why the prime minister even mentioned his domestic political opponents at an international summit, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said he was pointing to a wider issue about national security, which depends on international partnerships like Nato.

“We have seen both Reform and the Greens undermine that commitment to the Nato alliance,” she said. “I think that is hugely important because I think our national security comes first.”

Phillips asked what Reform’s leader Nigel Farage said or done to undermine Nato, to which she said: “We’ve seen Reform have not taken seriously the threat from Russia.

“They have refused and failed to do an investigation into Russian interference within their own party, despite the fact that their Welsh leader [Nathan Gill] was convicted of the links to Russia.

“They have too often dismissed the threat from Russia, even at a time when we see lethal poisons being used once again just as we saw in Salisbury.

“I do take that extremely seriously and I think it is a problem that Reform don’t.”

Phillips said there was another way to read the prime minister’s comments, calling it “a signal to our allies how rattled he is that he has to go to Munich to complain about domestic political opponents, Reform and the Greens.”

He added: “The message to our allies is that this guy is on his way out and there’s no point doing deals with him or with you.”

Cooper rejected that characterisation, saying: “The partnership Keir has built with other leaders, the work we are doing together is immensely important.”

Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf also rejected Starmer and Cooper’s claims about his party’s approach to Russia.

He told Sky News: “That is obviously not true. Nigel is the only political leader who has confirmed on air that he would indeed shoot down Russian aircrafts if they were in Nato airspace.

“Not a single other political leader, nor has Keir Starmer. We are crystal clear at Reform – this is a new era, and we totally agree that there’s a new world order that is emerging right now.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski also told Sky that Starmer’s speech was “not 100 miles away from what I’ve been saying for months now, which is that we need a closer relationship with Europe”.

“It’s quite bizarre to hear him repeating a lot of things I’ve been saying and making an attack on me at the same time,” he said.

While Polanski has previously called the Nato policy “out of date” because of Donald Trump’s involvement, he insisted the Greens would commit to defending a Nato country against an attack “if we’re in Nato as we are”.