Starmer's Munich Pitch: Britain, But On Britain's Terms

JESSICA TOAL

Keir Starmer’s Munich Security Conference message was designed to land as both reassurance and rupture: reassurance that Britain is back in Europe’s security conversation; rupture with the performative distance of the Brexit era. The applause line, “we are 10 years on from Brexit. We are not the Britain of the Brexit years,” was less a description of policy detail than an attempt to reset the emotional frame. But the substance of the pitch, and its contradictions, only become clear when you examine what “closer defence integration” actually requires: money, market access, rules, and trade-offs that British politics has spent a decade trying to avoid naming.

THE STRATEGIC CASE IS STRONG, YET DELIBERATELY UNDER-SPECIFIED

Starmer’s core argument is hard to dispute at the level of diagnosis: Russia constitutes a long-term threat; Europe’s defence industrial base is fragmented; procurement duplication produces inefficiency; and the United States’ underwriting of European security has enabled complacency. His “sleeping giant” formulation is familiar but effective: Europe is wealthy and capable on paper, yet struggles to turn aggregate power into deployable capacity.

Where the speech becomes less persuasive is in its leap from diagnosis to solution. “Integrate more closely on defence procurement” sounds pragmatic until you ask: integrate into what, on what terms, and with which governance? Joint procurement has a political economy. It creates winners (firms included in supply chains, states hosting production) and losers (those shut out by standards, security clauses, or “buy European” impulses). Any serious plan needs to specify how Britain would avoid being a payer without being a shaper, or, conversely, how European capitals would justify giving a non-EU state meaningful influence over EU-adjacent industrial choices.

SAFE: A LITMUS TEST FOR WHETHER “CENTRE OF EUROPE” IS REAL

There is UK-France interest in reopening talks about the UK joining Security Action for Europe (SAFE), an EU rearmament scheme, after negotiations stalled over the cost of entry. This is significant because it exposes the first hard edge of Starmer’s vision: Europe is not a single actor. It is a layered system of institutions (Commission, Council, member states) and national industrial strategies, many of which are protectionist by design even when wrapped in “strategic autonomy” language.

The French insistence that the high entry cost was “a result of Commission calculations” rather than French pressure reads like the diplomatic equivalent of plausible deniability. In practice, the question si not whether Paris personally set the figure; it’s whether Europe’s gatekeeping mechanisms will treat UK participation as strategically valuable enough to merit flexibility. If Britain wants access to an integrated European defence market, it will face the same dilemma it faces on trade: alignment and contributions bring access, while autonomy and red lines reduce it. The speech gestures at “politics and trade-offs” but largely avoids itemising them.

A EUROPEAN DEFENCE MECHANISM: CLEVER WORKAROUND, OR ANOTHER COMMITTEE?

Starmer’s interest in a European Defence Mechanism (an intergovernmental instrument open to all European democracies, inside or outside the EU) is politically astute. It offers a way to deepen cooperation without reopening the most toxic UK debate: formal reintegration into EU structures. It also tries to solve a genuine problem: if security needs an urgent, an intergovernmental vehicle can move faster than EU treaty logic and can include key non-EU actors.

But the mechanism risks becomes a workaround that recreates the very inefficiencies it claims to fix. Europe already suffers from overlapping institutions and competing initiatives. Adding a new body only helps if it has (1) real money, (2) binding commitments, and (3) procurement authority strong enough to prevent national vetoes and industrial horse-trading. Otherwise it is another “initiative” that signals seriousness without changing incentives.

The Brugel Institute and former UK foreign secretary David Miliband suggest the idea has technocratic pedigree and centrist appeal. Yet “joint assets across Europe” is the kind of phrase that becomes politically explosive when it touches sovereignty: who commands, who maintains, who pays, and who decides deployment?

“NO WEAKENING OF THE UK-US RELATIONSHIP”: THE NECESSARY REASSURANCE THAT ALSO CONSTRAINS POLICY

Starmer repeatedly stresses that closer UK-EU defence ties would not weaken the UK-US relationship or NATO, calling NATO “the most effective defence alliance we have ever known.” This reassurance is politically necessary: any hint of drifting from Washington would be weaponised domestically, and many European states still anchor their security planning to US capabilities.

Yet the reassurance also exposes a structural tension. If Europe truly needs to take “primary responsibility” for its conventional defence, then it must build capabilities that, at least at the margin, substitute for US enablers: lift, ISR, missile defence, stockpiles, industrial surge capacity. Doing that costs a great deal and inevitably shifts bargaining dynamics inside NATO. Starmer tries to finesse this by arguing Europe shouldn’t “replace all US capabilities” but should “decrease some dependencies,” moving “from overdependence to interdependence.” It’s a neat rhetorical middle ground; it is not a plan.

Interdependence is not automatically stable: it depends on trust, reliable supply chains, shared standards, and political willingness to accept mutual vulnerability. If member states still default to national procurement, the interdependence Starmer wants won’t materialise, only a more expensive form of fragmentation will.

THE DOMESTIC POLITICS: STATESMANSHIP FRAMED AS ANTI-POPULISM

The speech’s final movement is political theatre with a purpose. Starmer casts “peddlers of easy answers” on “extremes of left and right” as “soft on Russia” and “weak on NATO,” offering “division and then capitulation.” This is a classic consolidation strategy: define the national interest as responsible defence integration and paint dissent as reckless.

But that move can also backfire. First, it conflates legitimate debate (how much to spend, what to prioritise, what trade-offs to accept with Europe) with ideological extremism. Second, it dodges the most difficult domestic question: what exactly will Britain give up, or pay, to be “at the centre” of a stronger European defence setup? Without clarity, the anti-populist argument risks sounding like a pre-emptive dismissal of scrutiny rather than an invitation to it.

THE MISSING NUMBERS, AND THE MISSING MECHANISM OF DELIVERY

Starmer is right that Europe must “spend more, deliver more and coordinate more.” But coordination is where most defence visions die. Procurement reform means hard choices: standardising requirements, consolidating platforms, accepting that your national champion might not win. Manufacturing integration means confronting capacity bottlenecks, labour constraints, export controls, and the slow tempo of industrial ramp-up.

Most of all, “spend more” is not a slogan; it’s a fiscal decision. If the UK is serious, it needs a timeline, a spending trajectory, and a credible explanation of what is being cut, taxed, or borrowed to pay for it, especially in a tight domestic context. Without those specifics, the speech risks reading as a strategic positioning statement: ambitious, plausible in sentiment, but insulated from the accountability that makes defence policy real.

WHAT THE SPEECH IS REALLY DOING

Starmer’s Munich intervention is less a blueprint than a bid to change Britain’s bargaining position. It tells Europe: the UK wants back in, at least in defence industry terms. It tells Washington: Britain remains loyal to NATO and the bilateral relationship. And it tells domestic audiences: seriousness equals cooperation, while scepticism equals appeasement.

The open question is whether this triangulation is sustainable once negotiations begin. Defence cooperation is easier to praise in speeches than to implement in budgets and procurement contracts. SAFE membership costs, market access rules, governance of joint procurement, and the inevitable sovereignty trade-offs will force Starmer to choose between the symbolism of “post-Brexit Britain” and the practical concessions that “being at the centre” demands.