On a visit to Rome on Monday for meetings with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged "a new era" in cross-border collaboration to combat people smuggling gangs, as part of a reset in ties with the rest of Europe.

After winning an election in July, Starmer has made re-establishing diplomatic connections with European Union leaders his primary priority. His journey to Rome on Monday comes after he visited Berlin, Paris, and Dublin.
The British leader had vowed "a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system" before to negotiations with Meloni, who was close to Starmer's predecessor Rishi Sunak.
Although Starmer has abandoned the divisive plan of the previous government to send asylum seekers who come in tiny boats to Rwanda, he has not ruled out setting up procedures whereby asylum claims would be processed offshore, akin to the arrangement that Italy has with Albania."We're interested in the work that Italy and Albania are doing, but that is at an early stage," interior minister Yvette Cooper told broadcaster ITV.

"What we're more interested in is the work around organised immigration crime, the smuggling, the trafficking gangs, because that's delivering results straight away."

On Sunday, French authorities said eight people had died trying to cross the Channel to the UK after their boat got into difficulty, bringing the death toll in attempted crossings to 46 since the start of the year.

Starmer's Labour government has said it will step up deportation flights and use money saved from the Rwanda scheme to help law enforcement to tackle the crossings.

In Italy, Starmer visited the National Coordination Centre for Migration to discuss Italy's approach to the issue, which has seen a 60% drop in irregular arrivals by sea, his office said.

"Here there's been some quite dramatic reduction so I want to understand how that came about," Starmer told broadcasters, adding he wanted to know more about "upstream" work to stop people from making their journeys as well as other schemes.

During his discussions with Meloni, he will also bring up defence issues, possibly including Britain's participation in the GCAP fighter jet project with Italy and Japan.

Starmer did not promise that British involvement in the programme would continue, but he did play down rumours that it would be dropped during a defence review in July.