“Please, please can you teach Keir Starmer, some German, Denis. We love him in Germany and if he could speak a little German he would be such a political super-star!”

The appeal was from a German woman in Brussels, a key political fixer for the centre-right CDU party of Angela Merkel, Helmut Kohl and Konrad Adenauer.

Letter from Europe: A Tale of 2 leaders

Denis MacShane

“Please, please can you teach Keir Starmer, some German, Denis. We love him in Germany and if he could speak a little German he would be such a political super-star!”

The appeal was from a German woman in Brussels, a key political fixer for the centre-right CDU party of Angela Merkel, Helmut Kohl and Konrad Adenauer.

She works for the European People’s Party, (EPP) the federation of centre-right parties in Europe.

The Conservative Party quit the EPP under David Cameron to form a rag-tag European federation open to anti-EU nationalist, populist parties some with open racists and anti-semites in their midst.

It was the first political Brexit as the Cameron-Hague Tories moved hard to the isolationist right and prepared the ground for Britain to leave Europe.

We were sitting over coffee in a café opposite the giant Berlaymont building housing the European Commission.

I must have blinked as she went on. “Sir Starmer is every German’s idea of a perfect political leader. He is rather correct, a bit boring, always precise, does his homework, well briefed, speaks calmly, rationally, no extravagant rhetoric. Honestly if he could just learn a  little German he would be a political superstar in Germany!”

I had come to talk about the prospects for any easing of the Brexit straitjacket that the Tories have imposed on Britain and which is leading to daily reports of difficulties for businesses  and individuals.

But before we even could get started she bowled me over with her enthusiasm for the Labour leader.

The British political class has taken a nose-dive in global standing since the Brexit vote. Brexit has swallowed up the careers and reputation for David Cameron, Theresa May, and produced two pantomime PMs in Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Sylvie Bermann, the French ambassador, a star diplomat who had been French ambassador in Russia and China, wrote a book on her London years which covered Brexit and described Johnson as “un menteur inveteré” – an inveterate liar.

I can’t recall any top diplomat’s memoirs which so defined the leader of a major country with whom France has friendly relations.

But that is  how Johnson was seen around the world though Tory MPs seemed not to care about how Britain’s reputation would be hit if they made him PM.

Liz Truss did two years as Foreign Secretary but made no impact as she turned up at major global events like G7 meeting or UN General Assembly sessions and just read out her text, word-for-word like a robot. “We found her very funny” a top diplomat at the Quai d’Orsay, the French Foreign Office, told me. “She tried always to avoid the word ‘Europe” as if Brexit hade made Europe a banned word for any British minister to utter.

The Brussels jury is out on Rishi Sunak. Liz Truss accepted French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to participate in his pet scheme, the European Political Community, a kind of parking lot for countries like Armenia, Turkey, Kosovo, Georgia, Albania and Britain who are connected to Europe but not members of the inner club of EU member states.

Britain’s 6-week-long PM  smiled and exuded bonhomie towards the French president and they agreed to step up joint work on refugees crossing the Channel.  Sunak’s policy towards France is identical to Truss’s. But there is no movement by the UK on the Northern Ireland Protocol where Sunak continues the Truss policy of proposing a bill in the Commons and Lords that would allow any British minister to suspend any part of the EU Treaty – a solemn bit of international law – which the DUP or the fanatical Tory MP Europhobes in the misnamed Europe Research Group (ERG) don’t like.

Presidents Biden and Macron as well as governments in Dublin and other EU capitals  have made clear such violation of international law and a Treaty signed by Britain and ratified by the Commons is not acceptable.

Truss won Downing Street for a brief few weeks by crawling to the ERG and allowing the extreme identity DUP politicians to dictate her EU policy. Sunak is made of weaker stuff and just is a puppet in DUP hands.

Labour might offer to vote with Sunak to ditch the NIP bill and uphold the Treaty and with Labour support there would be a majority to move on. But Sunak seems to cling to the DUP.

So Brussels is watching to see how Sir Keir Starmer handles this issue.

The Party of European Socialists (PES) has given a warm welcome to the new Labour leader. The PES has several parties from non-EU countries like Switzerland, Norway, Albania, Turkey, Moldova and others and Labour can be an effective networker if it choses to. They are keen to see Sir Keir Starmer play an active role especially as Labour looks well poised to form a government after the next election.

They were puzzled by Jeremy Corbyn. He came to every possible meeting the PES held when he was Labour leader.

“Even when it was a routine meeting with nothing much on the agenda and member parties just sent an International Secretary, Jeremy would turn up and sit smiling at the table but since most of the discussion was on EU politics he did not have much to say as the EU was never of much interest to him,” I was told at the handsome office of the PES in the centre of Brussels.

The PES leaders  include key EU policy deciders like Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, Alberto Costa, the Portuguese socialist PM and Nordic social democratic prime ministers. They can be vital contacts as Labour re-engages with European politics after the lost Corbyn years.

The Socialist International founded 130 years ago has also just come back to life under the new leadership of Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, with a new general secretary, Benedicta Lasi, from Ghana. Labour is a founding member and the SI can allow Labour to play a post-Brexit role in international politics.