What might Keir Starmer discuss in meeting with Mike Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries?

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Britain’s new prime minister Keir Starmer was set to meet with leaders of the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the House of Representatives on Wednesday as the Nato summit in Washington entered its second day.

Starmer’s journey to Washington for the summit comes as he is less than a week into his tenure as prime minister.

The joint meeting with Mike Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries was likely to largely focus on establishing some of Starmer’s first relationships on Capitol Hill as prime minister while also touching on some policy issues including the most anticipated topic of the week: Ukraine, and the eastern European country’s journey to becoming a Nato member-state. US officials, alongside their counterparts in the UK and other Nato countries, are set to unveil what the Biden administration has been previewing as a “bridge to Nato membership” for Ukraine this week.

It’s still unclear what the exact details and requirements for that path to membership will entail, but more information is expected to be made public over the next few days and at President Joe Biden’s widely anticipated press conference on Thursday. It will be his first fully open press conference since 2022.

The prime minister also met on Wednesday with a bipartisan Senate delegation led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Ukraine is likely to be an issue of discussion between Starmer and congressional leaders, given the ever-present tough situation in which Speaker Mike Johnson, head of the House Republicans, still finds himself. Johnson has been personally supportive of continued military funding for Ukraine, a stance which has hardened since he became speaker and began receiving classified briefings. A significant portion of his party’s caucus in the House is not, however. That has led the Republican speaker to look to Democrats for votes to pass an aid package that the chamber voted to approve earlier this year after much delay and debate.

Those votes have been politically dangerous for Johnson, who has already survived one attempt to oust him led by a group of Republicans, again with the help of Democrats.

The Labour leader told reporters on the flight to Washington that he wants to see another Ukraine aid package “locked in” during his trip. Such a prospect would require another vote in the Republican-controlled House.

Should he speak separately with Jeffries, meanwhile, Starmer could very well also end up discussing the ongoing presidential election and the Democratic Party’s debacle surrounding the presumptive nominee, President Joe Biden.

No separate meetings with individual members of Congress have been announced, though they often happen on the margins of such major summits, particularly when they occur in the US.

After last month’s presidential debate with Donald Trump, the incumbent president has lost the faith of a serious number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill, a handful of whom are echoing those concerns publicly while the president and his supporters jam their fingers in their ears.

Starmer is known to be personally disgusted by Trump: after the January 6 attack on Congress, Starmer told the BBC that the siege was a “culmination of years of the politics of hate and division” embraced by the Republican Party.

“This is where it leads,” he said in 2021. “And that is why we all have to make the case for tolerance and respect and changing that culture. This is where hatred and division gets you — and it's a very, very bad place."