Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, made a below-the-radar trip to Brussels last month, as No 10 prepares to appoint its own foreign affairs adviser to help bolster the Downing Street policy operation.
As the UK’s attempts at a “reset” with the EU continue behind closed doors, No 10’s most senior aide made the trip to meet counterparts in Brussels before Christmas.
Starmer appears to have significantly stepped up diplomacy with France since taking office; his meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, this week was their seventh since July.
At the dinner hosted by Starmer at his Chequers country retreat, No 10 said the prime minister had “updated” Macron on the reset with the EU, as well as discussing small boat crossings, Ukraine, the Middle East, growth, defence, security, AI and energy.
Macron said the meeting was “a great opportunity” to discuss EU-UK relations and “the main crisis” in Ukraine.
Downing Street insiders acknowledge that negotiations with the EU have so far been very secretive. “Our guy prefers that private meetings remain private rather than trying to use the media as a tool during negotiations,” a No 10 source said, highlighting the contrast with previous Conservative administrations.
McSweeney previously took a trip to meet Donald Trump’s team in Florida and Washington, showing he is playing an instrumental part in No 10’s foreign policy agenda rather than focusing on domestic politics.
Allies also say McSweeney is aware of his lack of experience of foreign affairs since taking over the chief of staff role.
It is understood Downing Street is about to appoint a new senior foreign affairs adviser to replace the academic and historian John Bew, who worked under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak but left after Labour came to power.
The government is also recruiting a representative for talks with the EU, who will in effect be a senior civil servant working for Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of EU relations, but will also work closely with No 10.
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Whitehall sources said the government is aiming for smoother trade with the EU with the goal of boosting growth but said Labour’s manifesto pledge not to go back into the single market or customs union was clear and would not be broken.
Senior No 10 figures also rule out a full youth mobility pact, which the EU has been pushing for, but suggest the UK could agree to an Erasmus-style scheme. They acknowledged that this is not ideally what the EU would like to see because it would be for students, rather than young workers. But the principal of one-year university exchanges is potentially on the table
One government source said No 10 was clear it had promised to bring down net migration and legal migration, adding: “We can’t then say we’ll bring in a load of Bulgarian builders to construct the houses we need.”
The government also believes it can have improved relations on defence, energy and trade but there will be “no surprises” in the deal.