In a major foreign policy address, Sir Keir Starmer will declare that Britain’s “Brexit years” are over and call for significantly closer security cooperation with Europe, as described by The Independent.
The Prime Minister will tell the Munich Security Conference that the continent must curb its dependence on the United States, praising Europe as a “sleeping giant” whose combined economic and military might can defeat its enemies. He will frame this as a move towards “greater European autonomy” that answers calls for more burden-sharing, while stressing it does not herald a US withdrawal and that America remains a key ally.
Sir Keir will argue that turning inwards, as the UK did during Brexit, would amount to “surrender” in a perilous era. He will state that Europe’s economies dwarf Russia’s “10 times over” and that it has “huge defence capabilities”, but too often this results in less than the sum of its parts, with gaps in some areas and “massive duplication” in others.
Call for Integrated Defence
His vision includes closer UK-EU cooperation on defence to “multiply our strengths” and build a “shared industrial base across Europe that can turbocharge our defence production”. This push follows the breakdown of talks less than three months ago on Britain joining the EU’s new €150bn Security Action for Europe rearmament fund due to financial disagreements.
The speech comes against a backdrop of transatlantic tension, with former US President Donald Trump having previously sent “shockwaves through Europe” with repeated threats to take over Greenland and insults directed at various leaders. Trump has also falsely accused European Nato allies, including the UK, of avoiding the front line in Afghanistan. Last year at the same conference, US Vice-President JD Vance accused Europe of “retreating from some of its most fundamental values” and claimed the greatest peril was “the threat from within”.
Attack on Political Extremes
Sir Keir will also launch a political attack, describing Reform UK and the Green Party as “the peddlers of easy answers on the extreme left and the extreme right”. He will claim the future they offer would see “the lamps… go out across Europe once again”, a reference to a pre-First World War remark by Sir Edward Grey. He will state that these extremes “share so much”, being “soft on Russia and weak on Nato – if not outright opposed” and determined to sacrifice relationships “on the altar of their ideology”.
Upon arriving in Munich on Friday, Sir Keir held trilateral talks with Germany’s Friedrich Merz and France’s Emmanuel Macron, emphasising the need for cooperation. “There’s no UK security without European security. There’s no European security without UK security. So we have to work together,” he said.
Conference attendees are being greeted by the Munich Security Report 2026, titled “Under Destruction”, which savages Trump’s policies. It warns that global security structures risk being turned to rubble, stating the world has entered a period of “wrecking-ball politics” and that the US-led post-1945 international order “is now under destruction”.
Conservative Criticism
Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, criticised the Prime Minister’s stance. She said Sir Keir has “a habit of handing away sovereignty” and is “rolling the pitch for greater EU integration and less control for the UK”. She argued Britain should help bring the US and Europe together to strengthen Nato, adding: “We must not be overdependent on America, but neither should we offer Europe a blank cheque, prepared to accept any and all costs, as Labour are.” Dame Priti also claimed Sir Keir’s “repeated surrenders to China show he lacks the backbone to stand up for Britain” and that his “weakness has undermined the special relationship”.
