How can governments play a pivotal role as the world shifts? From decarbonising the economy to sustainable care systems, bold government strategies are needed now more than ever. Get informed by listening to Government Insights, the new podcast from EY Parthenon. This series explores how government executives can transform their strategies into actions that are future-proof and sustainable. Government Insights is out now. Download today wherever you get your podcasts.
The United States has been clear that we would respond to that. We've been clear to the Russians that we would respond to that. I'm not going to get into reports of what form that response might take. Rakeeti, Simeon, Simeon, Scott. Strong UK-China relationship is important for both of our countries and for the broader international community.
To govern is to choose. If Parliament chooses to go ahead with a sister dying, it is making a choice that this is an area to prioritise for investment. He can just leave it to people's individual conscience. He doesn't have to leave in his debate. And in fact, it's important that he doesn't. I'm Pippa Carrera. And I'm Kieran Stacey. You're listening to Politics Weekly Westminster for The Guardian.
We're recording this on a chilly Monday morning in Westminster. We've had to turn on the heater in the office and put on our thermal undies and our, well, my fingerless gloves for me. But here in this time last week, you were in an equally chilly Azerbaijan. Weren't you at the COP summit? How was that?
Yeah, that's right. Well, we weren't sure how chilly it was going to be. It turns out that Azerbaijan in November is pretty much exactly the same as London in November, overcast in about 10 degrees. It was a really flying visit. We arrived very late on the Monday night, so late that
we couldn't even do the normal hacks get together party nights. We managed a couple of beers in the hotel bar and then went straight to bed. And then had this very strange half day really in the cop conference itself, where a kid's time was going around having a series of bilaterals, then did a press conference, took a handful of questions, not very many questions at the end of that, and then we were shuttled back onto the plane again.
So it was one of those summits where you come away thinking, what on earth was the point of all that? And that is a question that occurs to me as he jets off on another trip now to Rio. He is away a lot. I know this has been talked about and covered quite a lot in the last few days, but it really is a marked change from Rishi Sunak and previous prime ministers. He's doing these long haul flights, changes of time zones,
Several nights away coming back straight back into it must be absolutely exhausting for kia stama but he does i don't know if he enjoys it or he just feels a sense of yeah he's actually been on 16 trips the 16th of course the g20 summit in Rio de Janeiro and one of our team.
have been with him on each of these trips. We've been on a couple ourselves, obviously, and Jessica L got the deputy political editorist down. No dancing on Copacabana beach. Just, sorry, covering the G20 summit in Great Day. More than we got in Azerbaijan. Oh, no, you just, I remember you said, you got a kebab from a
from a petrol station or something to the big dinner house. It was at one in the morning in a petrol station, which as well as, as well as not being the most glamorous of locations, we were also realised for us not exactly the most environmentally friendly of dinner choices. Well, I mean, you could argue that about the whole cop summit, couldn't you?
But yes, Starmer is currently in Brazil at the G20 summit. It's the 16th trip since the election. The first of those I was with him on when he went to Washington for the need to summit. And that was really in retrospect very striking moment because it was the last meeting that he had at the White House with Joe Biden before Joe Biden said the following week that he was going to stand down. He was already under a lot of pressure from the Democrats. And there was that very cringe-worthy heart-sinking moment
at the NATO summit when he accidentally referred to Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who is standing next to him, as Vladimir Putin, which I think for many people was like the final nail in the coffin of his attempts to run again as president. But he's been back to the States a couple of times since then. He's of three trips each to Berlin and Paris as he tries to renew relations with European partners. And of course, he was at the Commonwealth summit
in Samoa. And I think you're right, Kieran. He is an actor. He was an actor on that first one, and he'll be even more so now. Not least because it was just off the back of the general election campaign, which wasn't just the short six-week campaign. It'd been going on potentially building up to it for about a year. And then over the summer, when he had planned to take a week in Italy, I gather it was with his family, he canceled that because it was just after the riots broke out. And he felt probably rightly that he needed to be here and to show leadership
but he's clearly a bit of a workaholic so times i've been up close with him when he's been abroad you know he's very focused on the issue at hand does i think a bit of guilt that his family's been left at home and he's away so much i do think that he you know much of enjoys the right word but he certainly embraces his role as a global leader particularly now when other progressive countries progressive nations are having really quite a lot of domestic woes and he feels i guess maybe a bit more freedom with his huge majority back home in his election when
to go out and be a progressive voice, particularly on things like climate. I guess though that there is a little bit of pressure, certainly I've picked up from within some of those advisors in Downing Street that they don't want him to be bored too much, he needs to be seen to be focusing prioritising on what's here. An example of that is that Samura trip we mentioned for Chogum, the Commonwealth Summit,
Originally, we were told that it was going to be a trip via the Middle East on the way out, via the Gulf States, I should say, on the way out, and via Australia potentially on the way back. But they slimmed it down hugely because they thought actually the optics of him being out the country too much weren't necessarily great. There was talk about coming back from Rio via the US and trying to do a stop in the US on the way back from that, but from what I understand, that's not going to happen. I was talking to a special advisor at the end about this at the end of last week, and I said, look, do you think
that Starmer likes doing these trips, or does he just feel duty-bound to do so? And this advisor said the problem is for the Prime Minister that first of all, he went around during the election campaign saying we're going to put the UK back at a leading role on the world stage. And that kind of means that you do have to do a lot of this symmetry. But also the UK is in this unusual position where not only does it belong to NATO and the G7 and the G20, but then it has the Commonwealth role on top of that.
are a lot of international summits that the UK is required to attend. And at some point, a Prime Minister usually will say, you know what, I'm going to let someone down here. There are definitely plenty of world leaders who don't turn up to every single one of these. And I wouldn't be surprised if Kiyastama decides maybe next year that he's not going to do every single one.
Yeah, historically, prime ministers do quite like being out the country, not least because, particularly in the case of a prime minister like Boris Johnson, it enabled them to escape the woes, the domestic roseback home, to be behind, normally, like, high security.
to focus on a particular policy issue, global issue, and not constantly be quizzed about things that were going wrong at home. The exception to that, of course, was Rishi Sunak, who really didn't like foreign trips, maybe he'd done enough of them in his time previously, I don't know, and would actually sometimes get a bit testy and something press conferences and when he came back on the plane. And just to explain to people that normally the Prime Minister goes on an official plane and is accompanied by maybe 20, 25 members of the press pack,
normally lobby journalists, and we'll come back and do a huddle at some point, which is when everybody crowds around the Prime Minister and asks any question they want, whether it's domestic or foreign. Quite a difference over the last couple of decades since I started covering political journalism, because Tony Blair would only really do these based on whatever the foreign issue of the day is, and now you can ask about anything, whether it's NHS, whether it's their personal lives.
And interestingly, well, it's a bit insidery maybe for lots of people, but one thing that has changed very recently is that in the last few years, they started doing pictures of the journalist crowding around the Prime Minister for these huddles. And I've never really felt comfortable with that because even though the words are on the record,
It makes it, I think that the pictures which then came out, which were published right across the media, were of a bunch of journalists cramming in super close to the Prime Minister, and often laughing at their jokes or looking actually quite cozy. And I think it doesn't fairly illustrate the relationship that we at Westminster or we as garden journalists have with the politicians. You're basically so close because anybody who's had tried to have a conversation on a plane knows
it's really noisy and you can't hear particularly if you're standing behind them so everyone's leaning right in and inevitably there's great photographers they wait for just the moment you can have like a half an hour really serious challenging questioning and they wait for just the one moment where someone says something funny and everyone starts laughing and then snap the shot is there it's taken it sent out
And I don't think it worked well for the politicians. I certainly didn't feel comfortable with it as a journalist who tries very hard not to because you're politicians, you know, quite church and state about it, actually. And so in the last couple of trips, I've noticed they've stopped doing that. And I think it's probably a good development. Yeah. So two things I noticed on the Azerbaijan trip that had changed. The first was exactly what you're saying. There is now no longer a photo of the traveling hacks.
crowding around the prime minister. Also, the prime minister stood up, which kind of slightly changed the dynamic. So he stood up rather than sitting down in a chair. It made it actually more difficult for some people to hear him. So that may get changed back. But I think that number 10 was just conscious of this image of him sitting down and everybody else standing up around him.
almost look regal in its imagery, whereas actually it was just a kind of logistic thing as you're saying. The other thing that's changed that I understand was different when you traveled with Keir Starmer, but was different for me on the Azerbaijan trip, was that he didn't come back on the way back. So usually what happens as you're saying is on the way there, you get this on the record huddle where you ask any questions and you can use all of the lines.
What used to happen, certainly with Rishi Sunak, is then on the way back, and in fact, under previous prime ministers, you would either get the prime minister themselves or maybe some other senior ministers on the trip, come back and just have a more relaxed off the record conversation. Usually, it's not particularly newsworthy. You talk about footballer, you talk about your personal lives a little bit, and it's just supposed to be a bit more of a relaxed occasion.
get to know the person a little bit and sometimes they give you really really interesting insights about say foreign leaders or just the dynamics in the room in any particular bilateral which you can find ways to report if you can find out about them also from other people but
Keir Starmer didn't do that on this trip at all. He came back to say hello, and thank you for coming, and then went back to his seat. And I just wondered whether that's a sign of him not being as relaxed with the traveling pack as maybe previous prime ministers have been, or maybe he's just done so many of these. He's getting a bit weary of the last few months, of course.
Now, this summit in Brazil, just like the COP summit in Azerbaijan and some other recent trips that the Prime Minister has been on, will inevitably be overshadowed by the arrival or the imminent arrival of Donald Trump back in the White House and what he will do or won't do when he takes over the presidency next year in some really big areas of global affairs, like Middle East,
and, of course, Ukraine. And I think that will be absolutely top in everybody's minds when they meet in Brazil, where we're expecting the Ukraine conflict, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine to be top of the agenda in many of the half a dozen or so bilateral meetings that we're expecting, Kia Starmer, to have over there. Now, the backdrop to the discussions that are going to be taking place around Ukraine is the announcement last night that Joe Biden, who's still the US president until January,
is to loosen restrictions on US-made long-range missiles being used by Ukraine into Russia. The trigger for this is the fact that there are now 10,000 North Korean troops, a whole other party getting involved in the war on the ground in the Kursk region of Western Russia involved in the conflict in Ukraine. This decision by Biden, which hasn't formally been announced yet, could end up paving the way for other EU nations to follow suit, not least the United Kingdom,
which has decisions of his own to make around the storm shadow missile. And I mentioned Donald Trump's imminent revival being a factor in all of this. He, of course, has said that he would solve the conflict with Ukraine in 24 hours. His Vice President J.D. Vance has said that they will wind down military support for Ukraine. So it's obviously Biden thinking he will make the most of the short time he has left. But also, and I think this is crucial here in
This conflict after two and a half years is not going to be resolved on the battlefield, either by Ukraine pushing Russia way out of all of its territory, including Crimea, or indeed Russia marching on Kyiv. It's going to be resolved, and I think all sides recognize this, round the table, round the negotiations table. And what the West is currently calculating is how it does that when faced with Russia and North Korea and the military might of them.
how it does that putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position when it goes to the negotiating table. And I think that one of the calculations they're making is that they need to up the military might of Ukraine so that it becomes much more important for Russia to be willing to make compromises because of course their list of demands as they go to the table
is pretty unachievable. It's things like saying to Ukraine, you'll never be a nuclear power, agreeing to never being a member of NATO, to what it describes as the demilitarization and denatification, whatever that means of Ukraine, and crucially to giving up, to ceding quite big swathes, like a fifth of territorial Ukraine to Russia.
Yeah, I think that the unknown in this is exactly what Putin wants. So there has been talk of, well, maybe the settlement will be that de facto borders that now exist, the front lines of the war essentially become the actual borders between the two countries and
that Zelensky says, okay, well, you just keep the land that you're already occupying. Well, first of all, that's not acceptable to Ukraine, but secondly, we don't even know if that's acceptable to Russia. From what I'm told, lots of Russia hands expect him to try and go further to try and actually demand that Zelensky step down, or perhaps that there are new elections, how free and fair they would be, is unclear.
and possibly that he takes even more territory, and then it becomes a decision for Donald Trump, really, about, okay, which way are you going to go now? We know that he wants to do this, peace deal, but is he willing to let Putin have everything he wants, if what Putin wants is much more than he already holds? And that I'm not clear on.
And then the other thing, of course, that I think is going to be a really big talking point at the G20 is China because Kiyostama is finally going to meet the Chinese President Xi Jinping. That's the first time a UK Prime Minister has met a Chinese leader in six years. And that's partially because we've had so much turmoil domestically. We've had a succession of Prime Ministers. And I think to a certain extent Beijing has thought, well, it's not worth engaging while there's all this uncertainty back in London.
But it is obviously a signal from the Labour government that it wants to do things differently and maybe head back just tentatively slightly towards the Cameron Osborne golden era of UK China relations. That'll go down well on the Tory backbenches. Well, it's certainly the case that Keir Starmer has said that he wants to take a more realistic approach as he puts it to relations with China.
And let's not forget that despite the attempts to kind of recast the economic mission that this government has from growth to cost of living and living standards, growth does still underpin all their plans going forward for the economy bouncing back and being able to invest properly in public services.
Now they clearly regard the relationship with China, the trading relationship, and potentially the opportunities that exist there if Donald Trump's America ends up getting into a trade war with tariffs of up to 60% with Beijing, the opportunities that might exist for Britain to have a more constructive trading relationship, potentially benefiting from cheap goods that can no longer make it, for example, to the States.
And I think we're expecting Rachel Reece the chancellor to pay a visit to Beijing in January. As you say, there hasn't been a UK Prime Minister in Beijing since Theresa May in 2018, when she was trying again post Brexit to try and have a stronger trading relationship. So I think we'll see a dual shift of emphasis towards that trading relationship, but they will still have to bear in mind the security aspect of all of this.
The Conservatives are no longer the parliamentary force that they want so, but it is still the case that several Conservative politicians have been sanctioned by China. Obviously there'll be some concern on the backbenches of the Labour Party about the human rights aspect of all of this, not just the Uyghur Muslims,
in China itself, but also the human rights crackdown in Hong Kong, and specifically on the human rights campaign, Jimmy Lai, who is, of course, a British resident, and is currently going through the legal system as such as exists in Hong Kong. So there will be balances for a key astometer to reach careful balances,
over how he regards the security threat aspect of the relationship with China, but also the economic opportunities that sit down this morning in Brazil with President Xi potentially brings. It's funny, I was talking to somebody just a few days ago who has been in the room when a Prime Minister has met with a Chinese Premier.
And I said, what's it like when that happens? And they said, first thing you have to realize is it's extremely formal. Everything has been agreed. You know what is on the agenda. And you roughly know how long each thing is going to take. What both sides want to get from it really more than anything else. Maybe there's a couple of issues to straighten out leader to leader, but they also want to be able to brief their domestic audiences about what was discussed.
So what inevitably happens is the Brits managed to get human rights or some version of human rights on the agenda, but always has the last item. So that number 10 will then go out and tell journalists, it's on the agenda, we're going to talk about it. Then what happens is in the room, the Chinese Premier or the leader, whoever it is,
When they get to item, say, number four of five, start slowing down and taking longer and longer and longer over the conversation. And this is the point at which British officials realized that they're trying to make sure that they can't breathe out afterwards, that it was discussed. So then the game is on for the prime minister to try and interrupt the Chinese premier mid flow, move the conversation on. And he said this person I was talking to said at one point during one of these meetings,
Basically, the Chinese premier stood up, and as they were on their way out, the Prime Minister kind of said, oh, and human rights as well. Yeah, that's a thing. So they can say that. They can turn around to the duressical news that we didn't talk about. And of course, David Lamy, the Foreign Secretary, has been in Beijing recently. So presumably, we'll be offering some tips to cure stammer for his own sit down today.
But while all of this is going on overseas, we also have continued focus back here at Westminster on the assisted dying bill, which is going to come before Parliament for its second reading next week. And there's been this almighty row erupting within the Labour Party over the last few days. And I just kind of should rewind a bit. I think that many of us expected
with a big majority and a prime minister who in a previous career as director of public prosecutions had made it clear that he supported changing the law so that assisted dying could become legal. We all expected that actually this would be fairly straightforward, that there might be some sort of religious opposition, but that this legislation would probably go through, a historic piece of legislation would go through. But what seems to have happened is that
He's been a couple of quite loud voices on the anti-side of the argument on the side against assisted dying, which has started to shift the dial. And the loudest of those is, of course, we're treating the health secretary who has said that he wants to do work on the potential costs
to the NHS of this assisted dying legislation. And that, instead of the weekend, he regards this bill, when we clear over the weekend, that he regards this bill as a slippery slope, presumably that it could then be amended. And once you open the door to assisted dying, even with the protections and the guardrails that are in place with time, those could disappear.
And he's infuriated in particular Harriet Harmon, who backs the bill, but also lots of his colleagues, including in the cabinet, I spoke into a couple of cabinet ministers in recent days, who are really not very impressed that he has breached what they regarded as an agreement, or in fact it was an instruction from Simon Case's cabinet secretary not to breach cabinet collective neutrality.
on this issue, because it is, of course, a private member's bill and a free vote. And Q Starman himself, I think, said, told the Cabinet that he wanted them to be neutral. The two most important voices to be neutral, the Prime Minister himself, who has so far done that, and wears a greeting. And his reasons are, of course, that he's concerned about the politics of talking about his just dying rather than waiting list, for example. There may be an element of concern about paleo-to-palliative care, but does that then just end up skewing the debate
I don't think his own religion comes into it, although he's a religious man because he voted for assisted dying last time. But I also think let's not overlook constituency pressures. He has a big Muslim population and a big Jewish population in his constituency. I think he will be, a lot of this will be based on what's going on there too. But yeah, I think the dial appears to be shifting and a lot of it is because of where Streetings decisions began.
Yeah, it's really interesting how just a small number of voices can seem to shift the debate. I've also, like you have been talking to, and it's especially on the Labour benches MPs that I thought would be pretty safely in favour who are either having secular thoughts or are now definitely not going to vote.
There's still going to be plenty who do vote for it and there's lots of young, fairly liberal backbenchers who come in new intake who've never had to vote on this before. We're not really sure how they will vote this time. Nobody's doing any whipping. More very limited whipping. But it is causing tensions. I was talking to a cabinet minister the other day who's
said, frankly, that they thought it was outrageous that we're treating, had said as much as he had. They said, well, fair enough, you know, first time when you're asked, you're the health secretary, say, look, from a health, from an NHS point of view, this is what I think. But then to go out and commission new analysis and to really be as vociferous as he's been, they were really cross because they said, look, I would have said something, but we were told by case number we weren't allowed to. So, you know, some of us have he did that and some of us have not.
Also, personal relationships, I'm told, West greeting is pretty close to Kim LaBitter, the MP who has been guiding this bill through, less so now. This has turned into quite a bitter briefing war, really between the two of them. And I was talking to someone close to one of them. I won't say which one over the weekend. And they were saying, look, I think there's going to have to be some rapprochement after this bill has gone, after the vote has happened.
And I think that is true in a lot of parts of the Labour Party. To the extent that you can imagine number 10 of thinking, how did we end up in this position? Something that wasn't part of our manifesto, something that wasn't part of our agenda is now proving one of the most divisive issues in the Labour Party. An issue which of course is going to continue to dominate the headlines in the next 10 days until in the run up to that second reading debate and vote a week on Friday, which is laying bare at some of the tensions that exist at the very top of government over this.
But for now, that's all from us, so please like and follow Politics Weekly UK to make sure you keep getting our episodes in your feed. John Harris is back on Thursday, with an episode looking at farmers' protests over the changes made to inheritance tax in the budget. This episode was produced by Frankie Toby, music by Axel Kucute, and the executive producers of Phil Maynard and Nicole Jackson. Bye-bye.
How can governments play a pivotal role as the world shifts? From decarbonising the economy to sustainable care systems, bold government strategies are needed now more than ever. Get informed by listening to Government Insights, the new podcast from EY Parthenon. This series explores how government executives can transform their strategies into actions that are future-proof and sustainable. Government Insights is out now. Download today wherever you get your podcasts.
