From Mellieħa Sunsets to Westminster Power: How Malta’s British Ties Shape UK’s New Leadership Duo

Yvette Cooper Becomes UK Foreign Minister, David Lammy Deputy PM: What This Means for Malta’s British Community and Beyond

The Union Jack may flutter 2,000 kilometres away, but the political tremor that shook London on Monday morning was felt just as keenly in Sliema’s Windsor Bar and Gżira’s British Legion Club. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s surprise reshuffle—promoting Yvette Cooper to Foreign Secretary and naming David Lammy Deputy Prime Minister—has sparked lively debate among Malta’s 13,000-strong British residents and the thousands more Maltese who hold UK passports.

Cooper, 54, arrives at King Charles Street with a long-standing affection for the Mediterranean island. During the 2019 Labour leadership race she spent part of her summer holiday in a Mellieħa farmhouse, posting sunset photos from the Red Tower that still circulate on Maltese Facebook groups. Local Labour activists recall her impromptu drop-in at the party’s Ħamrun club, where she sipped Kinnie and discussed migration flows across the Central Mediterranean—an issue now squarely on her desk.

Lammy’s elevation to Deputy PM, meanwhile, resonates on a different frequency. The Tottenham MP traces part of his heritage to enslaved Maltese sailors resettled in 18th-century Barbados, a story he explored in a 2022 BBC documentary filmed partly at the Inquisitor’s Palace in Vittoriosa. “Malta is stitched into my family’s fabric,” he told Times of Malta at the time, words that have been replayed on Maltese TV talk shows since the reshuffle.

For the 3,500 Britons who have applied for Malta’s nomad residence permits since Brexit, the appointments carry practical weight. Cooper’s previous brief as Home Secretary saw her oversee the UK’s post-Brexit visa regime; diplomats in Valletta predict she will push for smoother reciprocal arrangements for Maltese students in the UK and British retirees here. Lammy, a vocal advocate for rejoining Erasmus+, could reopen doors for University of Malta students shut out since 2020.

Business leaders are watching closely. UK-Malta trade hit €2.1 billion last year, with iGaming, pharmaceuticals and maritime services leading the charge. “Cooper understands small-island economies—she holidayed here, she gets the scale,” says Marisa Xuereb, president of the Malta Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is lobbying for a fresh double-taxation treaty before 2025; insiders say Cooper’s Treasury background makes her pragmatic on fiscal fiddly bits.

Culturally, the shift is already visible. Mellieħa’s Parisienne Café has renamed its full English the “Cooper Breakfast” (extra mushrooms, avocado on the side), while the Malta Book Festival rushed to restock Lammy’s memoir “Tribes” after it sold out within hours of the announcement. PBS scheduled a primetime special pairing Cooper’s Mellieħa footage with Lammy’s Vittoriosa clips, soundtracked by local indie band The Travellers.

Yet beneath the buzz lies strategic calculation. Malta’s government quietly lobbied London last month for joint patrols against irregular migration, leveraging the island’s new status as a NATO “centre of excellence” for maritime security. With Cooper at the FCO and Lammy chairing the National Security Council, Maltese officials spy an opening to revive the 2020 migration deal shelved during the Truss interlude. A delegation led by Foreign Minister Ian Borg is expected in London within weeks.

Back in St Julian’s, the Brexit Brits’ WhatsApp group—aptly named “The Remainders”—is planning a welcome party at The Thirsty Barber. “We’ve booked a cake iced with both flags,” organiser Karen Smith laughs. “If Cooper and Lammy can get us back into the EHIC scheme, we’ll throw an even bigger one.”

For an island where every second family has a cousin in Manchester or a pensioner in Portsmouth, the reshuffle is more than Westminster gossip. It is a reminder that, in an interconnected world, cabinet changes in Whitehall ripple through Valletta’s limestone alleys just as surely as the evening church bells. As Cooper and Lammy take their seats at the top table, Malta watches, waits—and prepares its own seat at theirs.