LONDON — Keir Starmer loves to play the climate leader. But only when his political advisers (and the powerful Chancellor Rachel Reeves) tell him he’s allowed.
The green-minded U.K. prime minister flies into the COP30 summit in Brazil Thursday, armed with undeniable climate credentials.
His government is pressing ahead with a 2050 net zero target, even as right-wing political rivals at home run away from it. It is about to hand 20-year contracts, laden with financial guarantees, to companies developing offshore wind farms. Just by attending COP, Starmer has shown he’s willing to publicly back the faltering global climate cause, despite furious attacks on the green agenda by close ally Donald Trump.
But his claim to global leadership comes with a catch.
Action on climate change is also tied to the political agenda back home, where Starmer and Reeves insist they are focused on bringing down bills and driving economic growth. As the prime minister flies in and out of Brazil this week, those key themes dominate.
In a speech on Tuesday, Reeves pledged to “bear down” on the national debt and focus on the cost of living — even it requires “hard choices” elsewhere. Climate is no exception.
Shy green
It was Starmer’s “personal decision” to go to Brazil, U.K. Climate Minister Katie White told a pre-COP event in London on Tuesday.
It was reported in the run-up to the summit that he would skip Brazil, amid concerns among his top political aides about the optics of a jaunt to South America to talk climate while voters — disillusioned with Starmer and Labour — struggle with the cost of living at home and brace for tax rises expected in the budget.
In the end, Starmer opted to go. But the absence of a full traveling press delegation, the norm at previous COPs, means his visit will generate less media coverage. (Government officials insisted the decision not to take a full press pack was purely logistical.)
Starmer, while not an expert, is instinctively supportive of climate action, said one government official.
But not so much so, countered a Labour MP, that he has “his own ideas about things.”
“He wants to do the right thing, but would be steered as to whether that’s talking about forests or clean power or whatever. I suspect [No 10 Chief of Staff] Morgan McSweeney didn’t want him to go,” said the MP, granted anonymity to give a frank assessment of their leader.
Jobs at home good, trees abroad bad
The COP30 leaders’ event is taking place in Belém, the Amazon port city near the edge of the world’s greatest rainforest. But in a symbol of how domestic messaging trumps all else, Starmer will use that global platform to talk about a somewhat less exotic port: Great Yarmouth in East Anglia.
It’s one of three U.K. locations — along with Greater Manchester and Belfast — where new, private sector clean energy deals are being announced, securing a modest 600 jobs.
If COP’s Brazilian hosts were hoping for a grander global climate vision, they are about to be disappointed.
The U.K. won’t be stumping up any taxpayer money for a global fund to support poorer countries to protect their tropical rainforests — key carbon sinks that, left standing, can help slow the rate of climate change. The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) is supposed to be the centerpiece of the summit for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but Lula has not been able to rely on even his close, left-wing ally Starmer — with whom he likes to chat about football — to weigh in with a financial contribution to match Brazil’s $1 billion.
The U.K. played a role in establishing the concept of the TFFF. An energy department spokesperson said the government remained “incredibly supportive” of the scheme.
But, with Reeves warning this week that her budget would deal with “the world as we find it, not the world as I would wish it to be,” her Treasury officials won a Whitehall battle over the U.K.’s financial backing for the scheme. Ministers say only that they will try to drum up private sector investment.
‘Keir, somewhere in the middle’
The decision neatly captures the Starmer approach to climate action.
If it suits the domestic economic and political agenda, great. If not then, then there is no guarantee of No. 10 and Treasury support.
Taxpayer-funded international aid spending, a vital part of the U.K.’s global climate offer, has been slashed.
At the same time, despite stretching emissions goals, one of the world’s busiest airports, Heathrow, will be expanded — because of its potential benefits for growth.
Ministers are looking at watering down a pledge to ban new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, amid a sclerotic economy. The Treasury is considering easing the tax burden on fossil fuel companies.
The bipolar approach risks bringing Starmer and Reeves into conflict with the U.K.’s energetic, committedly green Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who will lead the country’s delegation to the COP30 conference and the formal United Nations negotiation.
“On all of this, there is Ed on one side, Rachel on the other, and Keir somewhere in the middle,” said the government official.
Starmer largely subcontracts his climate and energy policy to Miliband, said an industry figure who frequently interacts with government.
Many MPs wish Starmer would act more like Miliband and embrace his green record more exuberantly. They point to the recent surge in support for the Green Party, which is making some in Labour nearly as nervous as the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to their right.
Outflanked
In that context, it was a “no-brainer” for Starmer to go to COP and appear “visibly committed to climate action,” said Steve Akehurst from the political research firm Persuasion UK. “In so far as there is any real backlash to net zero in the U.K., it does not exist inside the Labour electoral coalition,” he said. The Greens are now “competing strongly for those votes.”
A second Labour MP put it bluntly. “Starmer is so politically weak that to not attend would open up yet another front on his already collapsed centre-left flank,” they said.
Before getting on the plane to Brazil, Starmer met sixth-form students at 10 Downing Street to talk about the summit and the environment.
There was a flash of the green, idealistic Starmer that some say lurks beneath the political triangulation. He took the opportunity to remind the teenagers of the “obligation we undoubtedly have to safeguard the planet for generations to come.”
“But also,” he added, it’s about safeguarding “hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country.”
Additional reporting by Abby Wallace.
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