'Britain at the heart of Europe': How Starmer's plans are going down in the EU

"A UK prime minister, using the idea of getting closer to the European Union as a political life vest to get the British public on his side? That is certainly not something we in the EU would have predicted. Especially when you think - it's the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit vote next month!"This was the response of an EU contact of mine, here in Brussels. He asked to remain anonymous to be able to speak freely. We were discussing the highly anticipated speech given by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Following the massive slap in the face he got from voters last week in local elections, he launched a bid this morning to save his political life. In what was billed to be a defiant address, Starmer pledged to lay out "a platform on which we can build" tighter links with the EU. The place to do that, he seemed to intimate, was around the next EU-UK summit this summer. "This Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe, by putting Britain at the heart of Europe, so that we are stronger on the economy, stronger on trade, stronger on defence," he said.Jill Rutter, former British civil servant and senior research fellow of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, described his comments as "a damp squib". It lacked even "one single new proposal", she told me.The response across the Channel is mixed. Quite different on trade and the economy, as opposed to defence and security.On defence, Europe is very much concentrating on the bigger picture: Iran, the Russia-Ukraine crisis and deteriorating relations with the US under Donald Trump. The UK is viewed as a key and constant ally inside Nato and alongside the EU. On Monday, the UK announced its latest sanctions package against Russia, for example.