Enda Brady: UK correspondent ahead of Sir Keir Starmer's appearance at upcoming NATO summit

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is set to appear at this week's NATO summit, just days into his new role.

It's widely expected the ongoing war in Ukraine will be top of the agenda, with growing calls for more aid coming from the region. 

UK correspondent Enda Brady says Starmer is expected to do well under these circumstances.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right with us. Now we have our UK correspondent in
to Brady ay Inda. Hey, Heather, great to speak to
you again. So Keys Damas off tonight. I mean this
will be easy stuff for him. He's not going to
stuff this Upasi, No, absolutely not. No, He's hit the
ground running. We've seen legislation pasted already, new MPs coming
into Parliament today and honestly, it feels like the winds

(00:21):
of change, a breath of fresh air. I'm just running
out of cliches here, but you know, to have had
three or four days of competent governance, it's quite remarkable. Really,
We're just getting used to it and it seems to
be quite a positive good thing. So yes, he's heading
to Washington, d C further natal summer tomorrow and the
big talking point, of course, from the European perspective, will
be the ongoing war in Ukraine, so he will reiterate

(00:44):
UK support for that. Already he's getting squeezed by various
different army chiefs who are coming out and saying we
need more spend on defense, and I think that is
something that quite frankly, will have to be addressed because
the latest one is an army chief coming out today
saying that if Britain went to war, it would have
enough materials to last a month. So that's where the

(01:05):
state of everything is after fourteen years of the other lot.
Ye it's pretty grimy, hey Jesus compect from France? Yes,
literally just in the door, So big, big news on
the election over there. Everyone was expecting this far right.
I think everyone in the media, certainly in the UK
was expecting this far right and they are very far
right National Rally Party to win. All the other lot

(01:28):
on the left and kind of Greens, everyone who hated
them cobbled together this very loosely held coalition and they've
won the election. So France has now swung to the
far left. There are communists in this group, there's a
guy who leading it, who's actually a Marxist, and there's
a policy in the papers today saying that so Macron

(01:50):
now is the kingmaker. He can choose who he wants
and he can kind of put together a moderate coalition.
That's what he wants to do. However, the left wing
group themselves are saying that the first tax priority when
they come in is a tax on the super rich,
anyone earning over four hundred thousand euros a year will
be paying ninety percent tax at a certain level. And

(02:13):
they also want to reduce the pension age back down
to sixty So you can see why a lot of
people vote for them. That's not gonna happen, is it. No,
it's not. It's not gonna happen. But I tell you what,
I've spent a few days in France. Now there's a
lot of anger over there. Macron is not popular at all.
People have People on the right and the far right

(02:35):
are very angry about migration. People on the left are
angry about the super rich just basically getting richer, and
everyone else kind of just really struggling to make ends meet.
It's not in a good place. And I spent two
days in Paris, and let me tell you, A they
are not ready for the Olympics, and B you speak
to Parisians and I know they're famously grumpy. They're beyond

(02:57):
board of telling people that they don't want the oly
So it's strange. I mean, you know, seeing security ramping up.
I went to look at the Eiffel Tower. We did
some filming yesterday and all Parisians can tell you is
that this is going to be a terrible thing for Paris.
So I was telling them that, you know, we had
the same thing in London and twenty twelve Londoners felt
it wouldn't be good, and by two days in they

(03:19):
were loving it. So Refrench change, I say, they're not
ready because I'm seeing scaffolding everywhere. I'm seeing security operations
with people who genuinely didn't seem to have a clue
what was going on yesterday. And on top of that,
what I really don't like is the fact that the
metro the underground system are there. Cube Basically you can't

(03:40):
tap and go with your mobile phone, so having hundreds
of thousands of people on the move every few hours
for sporting events, the quickest way to get around the
city is the metro. And yes, you can go and
buy a book of twenty tickets in advance if you
qu up. But I think we're so used to certainly
in London, you know, tap on your mobile phone, off
you go, set and stops later, you're out where you

(04:01):
want to be, and that can't happen in Paris here. Enda,
thank you very much, appreciate it. Talk to you in
a couple of days. It's into Brady are UK correspondent.
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