Starmer seeks ‘reset’ with UK nations after election victory

LONDON: Newly-elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday began a whistlestop tour of UK nations, promising an “immediate reset” of relations with the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Starmer was due to meet Scotland´s First Minister and leader of the pro-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) John Swinney in Edinburgh ahead of trips to Cardiff and Belfast expected on Monday.

The meeting comes as the SNP was almost wiped out at last week´s election which put Starmer´s Labour Party in power by a landslide.

Labour, which crushed Rishi Sunak´s ruling Conservatives at the polls, also overturned more than a decade of SNP domination in Scotland by capturing the majority of its 57 seats.

Swinney lamented a “very, very difficult and damaging” election result for his party.

He had set the party´s sights on winning 29 seats as a mandate for reopening negotiations with the British government for another independence referendum, but it returned only nine MPs.

Under ex-premier Tony Blair, Labour was the architect of devolving power to the regions in the late 1990s with the setting up of parliaments or national assemblies in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. But under the Conservatives leaders in the three capitals complained that they were increasingly sidelined.