Sir Keir Starmer flies to Canada later to meet Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England who became his country’s prime minister in March.
The two men will get together in the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday evening, ahead of the G7 summit, hosted by Carney, which begins in the province of Alberta on Sunday.
It will be the first face-to-face gathering of world leaders since Israel’s strikes on Iran.
The talks between the two prime ministers on Saturday will focus on security and trade.
Carney’s office said the aim was to “strengthen the long-standing economic and security partnership between the two nations.”
Negotiations between the UK and Canada on a trade agreement broke down early last year, before the British general election, after a dispute over beef and cheese.
Since then, officials on each side have remained in contact, but the conversations up to now were described to me by a Whitehall source as “not in earnest…not anything substantial”.
Downing Street has been proudly talking up three recent international deals over trade, with the European Union, India and the United States – at a time of volatility in the global economy following the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
The two prime ministers have had a starkly different public approach to President Trump.
Sir Keir has approached his dealings with the US president with a warmth critics have seen as fawning.
Carney was frequently blunt in his rejection of Trump’s branding of Canada as America’s 51st state.
He expressed irritation too that Sir Keir had theatrically doled out an invitation for a state visit to the UK for the president – in the midst of that questioning of Canada’s sovereignty.
On Sunday, Sir Keir and Carney will fly to Kananaskis in Alberta in the Canadian Rockies for the G7 summit.
They will join Trump and the leaders of France, Italy, Japan, Germany and the EU for three days of talks.
Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will also be there.
