Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to China last week was the first by a British prime minister for eight years. His attendance at a gathering of EU leaders this week is the first since Brexit. When Rachel Reeves went to the Gulf last autumn, no chancellor of the exchequer had been for six years.
So, just to run through those destinations again: the world’s second-largest economy, the largest cross-national single market and a region that accounts for some 40 per cent of all sovereign investment globally. Perhaps the predecessors of Starmer and Reeves had more pressing engagements elsewhere.
Slowly, gingerly, Britain is coming out of a decade of sulking in its room. Whatever his fumblings in the domestic scene, Starmer is the first prime minister since David Cameron to understand the nation’s place in the world, which is that of a mid-sized actor in need of friends — or at least partners of convenience.