Starmer warns Burnham he cannot spend less time on diplomacy | Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer has warned his potential successor Andy Burnham that it will not be possible to spend less time on international affairs.
Speaking during a BBC interview, he also spoke of his “intensely personal” decision to announce his resignation last month after two years as prime minister.
Throughout his premiership, the Labor leader has faced accusations that he spent too much time on the world stage rather than on domestic issues, with his opponents calling him “never the Keir here”.
Burnham has largely focused on domestic issues as she moves towards becoming the next prime minister.
But Starmer warned the future prime minister could not spend any less time grappling with world turmoil than he already has.
He told the BBC: “If you’re the Prime Minister and you care about what bills are going to be like in any household across the country, you should care about finding a permanent solution to the situation in Ukraine, you should care about what happens in the Strait of Hormuz.
“It doesn’t make sense to think you can just separate those two things.”
Asked if it was possible for his successor to spend less time on diplomacy, he said: “No, I don’t think it’s possible. So this suggestion that in the modern age you can simply separate the international and the domestic, it just…it doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s not right. It’s not right.”
Starmer also told how he decided to resign after spending a weekend with his family at Chequers, the bountiful Buckinghamshire estate available to all prime ministers.
He said: “For me, and this may be different for other people, it ended up being a very personal decision and so it was a decision that was made while Vic and I were away with the kids, we went to Checkers and spent two days together as a family and that’s when I came to my final decision.”
Starmer also said he believed he had “saved” Labor and been a successful prime minister, adding that he had promised to “keep my mouth shut” under his successor.
Burnham previously offered some tips on how to manage foreign policy when she participated in an “Ask Me Anything” session on the Reddit forum site.
The Makerfield MP said he would “100%” give Ukraine the same level of support as Starmer and said he wanted to continue the outgoing prime minister’s efforts to broker a closer relationship with the EU.
