Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said he was dreaming of a “Breturn” after talks with Sir Keir Starmer over closer ties between the UK and European Union.
“I am aware this is a dream: that instead of a Brexit, we will have a Breturn,” Mr Tusk told a news conference following the pair’s meeting in Warsaw on Friday afternoon.
“Perhaps I am labouring under an illusion. But I’d rather be an optimist and harbour these dreams in my heart. Sometimes they come true in politics.”
The two leaders held talks over Sir Keir’s plans for a post-Brexit reset, as well as a new UK-Poland defence and security treaty to bolster both countries’ militaries and tackle people-smuggling gangs.
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The remarks by Mr Tusk, who served as president of the European Council during the UK’s ill-tempered negotiations over its withdrawal from the bloc, will create unease that Sir Keir is seeking to reverse Brexit.
The Polish prime minister is no stranger to making controversial statements criticising Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
He once said there was a “special place in hell” for those who pushed for Brexit “without even a sketch of a plan”.
‘Slogans, words and xenophobia’
And in a fresh dig at Britain’s former Conservative government, Mr Tusk on Friday criticised its plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda as just “slogans, words and xenophobia”.
He said liberal democracies had to instead deliver “effective countermeasures, based on facts” to tackle illegal migration.
Sir Keir is set to travel to Belgium early next month to attend a “retreat” being held by EU leaders to discuss the continental defence at Château de Limont.
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The Prime Minister is expected to unveil more details of his proposed foreign policy and defence pact he wants to broker with the bloc.
But he will also use the dinner to call for closer relations to reduce customs checks and controls on trade between the UK and EU.
Asked whether he would support the creation of a European army, Sir Keir said a meeting of defence ministers from the European Five (E5) group of Poland, Germany, France, Italy and the UK was “not about creating an army” but forging closer ties to bolster security.
“The meeting that happened the other day is vitally important. That isn’t about creating armies. It’s about how we share our security concerns and build on what we’ve already got.”
‘Threats that we face’
The UK-Poland security treaty will deepen ties between the two countries’ defence industries, including on producing new air-defence systems for the Eastern European nation, which borders war-torn Ukraine.
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It will cover “all aspects of the threats that we face and the steps that we must take to meet them”, according to Sir Keir.
“This includes deepening ties between our defence industries,” the Prime Minster told reporters.
“The UK has secured £8 billion of defence deals in Poland over the last three years alone, and we’re going further today, opening a new joint programme office in Bristol to deliver our £4 billion partnership, to deliver the next generation of air-defence systems to Poland.”
Earlier on Friday, Sir Keir and his wife Victoria, who is Jewish, visited Auschwitz, a former Nazi concentration camp.
“Nothing could prepare me for the sheer horror of what I have seen in this place. It is utterly harrowing. The mounds of hair, the shoes, the suitcases, the names and details, everything that was so meticulously kept, except for human life,” he said of their visit.
“As I stood by the train tracks at Birkenau, looking across that cold, vast expanse, I felt a sickness, an air of desolation, as I tried to comprehend the enormity of this barbarous, planned, industrialised murder: a million people killed here for one reason, simply because they were Jewish.”
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