"A UK prime minister, using the idea of getting closer to the European Union as a key way to get the British public on his side? That is certainly not something we EU-types would have predicted. Especially when you think - it's the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit vote next month!"
This was the response of an EU contact of mine, here in Brussels. He asked to remain anonymous to be able to speak freely. We were discussing the highly anticipated speech given by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Following the massive slap in the face he got from voters last week in local elections, he launched a bid this morning to save his political life.
In what was billed to be a defiant address, Starmer pledged to lay out "a platform on which we can build" tighter links with the EU. The place to do that, he seemed to intimate, was around the next EU-UK summit this summer.
"This Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe, by putting Britain at the heart of Europe, so that we are stronger on the economy, stronger on trade, stronger on defence," he said.
Jill Rutter, former British civil servant and senior research fellow of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, described his comments as "a damp squib". It lacked even "one single new proposal", she told me.
