British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met his Irish counterpart Simon Harris at his country house Chequers on Wednesday for bilateral talks ahead of the UK hosting dozens of European leaders.
In a brief meeting before dinner, Starmer said he was ‘pleased’ to have the chance at ‘resetting, strengthening and deepening our relationship’.
Harris said the leaders’ first in-person meeting since Starmer’s Labour government was elected two weeks ago, ‘means a lot... to Ireland’.
The focus ‘resetting’ relationships echoes Starmer’s commitment to resetting ties with Europe at Thursday’s European Political Community meeting at Blenheim Palace near Oxford, southern England.
Following a Nato summit in Washington last week, Starmer will have the chance to repair strained post-Brexit relations with the EU, with leaders set to discuss Ukraine, illegal immigration and energy security at the EPC summit.
Tensions between the UK and Ireland also simmered under the previous Conservative government with Boris Johnson’s hard break from the EU risking destabilising relations between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Starmer had an early start mending Anglo-Irish ties with the King’s Speech earlier on Wednesday which laid out his government’s legislative priorities.
Among them was a pledge to scrap a law granting conditional immunity to perpetrators of crimes during the ‘Troubles’ era of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, fiercely opposed by relatives who lost their lives.
Harris had earlier said he ‘welcome(s) the commitments that the incoming British government has given in relation to replacing the Legacy Act’.
A recent source of friction has been an influx of migrants in Ireland, who the EU member has said entered from Northern Ireland, and previously planned to deport back to the UK.
Ahead of the meeting, Harris said he expected to discuss ‘Northern Ireland and international issues, including the situation in Gaza and in Ukraine’.
The leaders were also set to reaffirm their commitment to the Good Friday Agreement, the landmark peace accord brokered in 1998 which ended thirty years of sectarian violence.
source: AFP
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