B
y the time you read this, Sir Keir Starmer will be in Montreal. Yesterday he was in The Hague. Next week, Paris. Or, more precisely, the Elysée. Nice work if you can get it. And these days there are no shortage of invitations for the leader of the opposition to play statesman.
Few of his predecessors got the chance. Labour leaders and their lieutenants usually find themselves regarded with condescension, indifference or bemusement. When Neil Kinnock had a short half-hour at the Oval Office in 1987, Ronald Reagan recognised the unmistakable eyebrows of one Englishman in his party and strode straight up to greet him. “Nice to meet you, Mr Ambassador,” he told Denis Healey, the shadow foreign secretary. “But I’ve already met him,” the
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