Britain needs all the friends it can get as it fights to be heard in a European sphere from which it recklessly exiled itself three years ago. This increasingly desperate post-Brexit quest for relevance and influence will take Rishi Sunak to Moldova this week, a poor, landlocked former Soviet republic of fewer than 3 million people, squeezed between Ukraine and Romania, that many in the UK might struggle to locate without help from Google Maps.
Sunak will attend the second annual summit of the European Political Community, to which 46 other national leaders are invited. Ironically, the EPC is the brainchild of France’s president and Tory Brexit bogeyman, Emmanuel Macron. It brings together EU states plus countries, such as Turkey and Serbia, denied EU membership, and outliers, such as the UK and Norway, that don’t want it.
