Some onlookers will write off today’s Prime Minister’s Questions as a non-event given the absence of rhetorical fireworks in the Commons as party leaders set out their stalls on the Ukraine war.
And yet we learned a great deal. For a start, Keir Starmer may have been doing a serviceable impression of mid-period Tony Blair as an international statesman of late, but he is in fact a far more cautious premier.
When pressed by Kemi Badenoch about the dangers of British peacekeeping troops being attacked by Russia were we to put boots on the ground in Ukraine in the absence of US security guarantees, Starmer gave a very strong signal that he will not take such a risk. “That’s the last thing anybody wants to see. The whole point is to avoid conflict… and ensure guarantees to any deal,” he replied.
In other words, he will channel his inner Harold Wilson – who stayed out of the quagmire of Vietnam when invited to deploy British troops there – and not his gung-ho inner Blair, if such a thing indeed exists.
Starmer’s full-throated support for President Zelensky and convening of a “coalition of the willing” to help supervise a peace deal is entirely contingent on President Trump budging on signing-up to a protective US military backstop. In the absence of that, the weekend’s London conference of European leaders wholeheartedly backing Zelensky and raging against Putin is destined to be remembered as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In such circumstances, Starmer would lose much of the extra political capital he has acquired of late by seeking to act as the “bridge” between Europe and the US. He was praised for his statesmanship in the Commons today by one Labour backbencher and indeed it is hard to see how he could have handled Trump much better to date. He has worked out a way to signal his different outlook to Trump indirectly – the red carpet and royal audience for Zelensky, today’s pointed reference to the anniversary of the deaths of six British soldiers in a war in defence of the US in Afghanistan – while never directly criticising the US President. But were he a canoeist negotiating a set of rapids, we would say that though he has not capsized, he is only half-way through.
We have a fast-evolving picture here. Currently British public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile to the humiliation of Zelensky at the hands of the Trump administration. Yet should peace descend upon Ukraine in a few weeks in a deal that secures its future as an independent nation, that may well change. And in transactional Trumpian terms of how many “cards” a leader holds, Starmer does not have very many: depleted UK armed forces, scaredy-cat potential European allies, a domestic public very sceptical of foreign military adventures, an enemy in the Kremlin who would love to humiliate the UK.
Some will say that Badenoch wasted an opportunity to highlight various absurdities and pretensions within Starmer’s posture, but that would be to misread things. The Tory leader set out her reading of events openly and honestly: that highlighting divisions between the US and Ukraine only helps Putin, that she will not give “blank cheques” of support over the possible deployment of UK forces, that the centrality of our security alliance with the US is key, that a new trade deal between our two nations is hugely desirable. Starmer accepted all these points.
Only when Badenoch depicted last autumn’s Budget by Rachel Reeves as a threat to economic security did his patronising tone towards her of recent weeks return: “We were doing so well,” he replied before rolling out the usual line about a £22 billion black hole.
While Starmer is for now confident that his right flank is under control, interesting things are starting to happen on his Left. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey revelled in listing various faults of Trump, questioning Starmer’s depiction of him as a “reliable ally”. If Trump didn’t deliver security guarantees for Ukraine, what was Starmer’s “Plan B”, he demanded to know – as if peace in Ukraine was a uniquely British responsibility. The SNP wanted Starmer to commit to sending frozen Russian funds to Kyiv to help the war effort. Starmer noted that the SNP’s support for unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain was looking even dafter than usual.
As so often in Commons set pieces based on each party’s MP numbers, Reform was the dog unable to bark. Earlier in the week Starmer accused Nigel Farage, quite unfairly, of “fawning over Putin”. Given his active alliance with Trump, the Ukraine issue is a veritable minefield for Farage right now. But remember this: we are only at the beginning of the end.
Some onlookers will write off today’s Prime Minister’s Questions as a non-event given the absence of rhetorical fireworks in the Commons as party leaders set out their stalls on the Ukraine war.
And yet we learned a great deal. For a start, Keir Starmer may have been doing a serviceable impression of mid-period Tony Blair as an international statesman of late, but he is in fact a far more cautious premier.
When pressed by Kemi Badenoch about the dangers of British peacekeeping troops being attacked by Russia were we to put boots on the ground in Ukraine in the absence of US security guarantees, Starmer gave a very strong signal that he will not take such a risk. “That’s the last thing anybody wants to see. The whole point is to avoid conflict… and ensure guarantees to any deal,” he replied.
In other words, he will channel his inner Harold Wilson – who stayed out of the quagmire of Vietnam when invited to deploy British troops there – and not his gung-ho inner Blair, if such a thing indeed exists.
Starmer’s full-throated support for President Zelensky and convening of a “coalition of the willing” to help supervise a peace deal is entirely contingent on President Trump budging on signing-up to a protective US military backstop. In the absence of that, the weekend’s London conference of European leaders wholeheartedly backing Zelensky and raging against Putin is destined to be remembered as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In such circumstances, Starmer would lose much of the extra political capital he has acquired of late by seeking to act as the “bridge” between Europe and the US. He was praised for his statesmanship in the Commons today by one Labour backbencher and indeed it is hard to see how he could have handled Trump much better to date. He has worked out a way to signal his different outlook to Trump indirectly – the red carpet and royal audience for Zelensky, today’s pointed reference to the anniversary of the deaths of six British soldiers in a war in defence of the US in Afghanistan – while never directly criticising the US President. But were he a canoeist negotiating a set of rapids, we would say that though he has not capsized, he is only half-way through.
We have a fast-evolving picture here. Currently British public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile to the humiliation of Zelensky at the hands of the Trump administration. Yet should peace descend upon Ukraine in a few weeks in a deal that secures its future as an independent nation, that may well change. And in transactional Trumpian terms of how many “cards” a leader holds, Starmer does not have very many: depleted UK armed forces, scaredy-cat potential European allies, a domestic public very sceptical of foreign military adventures, an enemy in the Kremlin who would love to humiliate the UK.
Some will say that Badenoch wasted an opportunity to highlight various absurdities and pretensions within Starmer’s posture, but that would be to misread things. The Tory leader set out her reading of events openly and honestly: that highlighting divisions between the US and Ukraine only helps Putin, that she will not give “blank cheques” of support over the possible deployment of UK forces, that the centrality of our security alliance with the US is key, that a new trade deal between our two nations is hugely desirable. Starmer accepted all these points.
Only when Badenoch depicted last autumn’s Budget by Rachel Reeves as a threat to economic security did his patronising tone towards her of recent weeks return: “We were doing so well,” he replied before rolling out the usual line about a £22 billion black hole.
While Starmer is for now confident that his right flank is under control, interesting things are starting to happen on his Left. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey revelled in listing various faults of Trump, questioning Starmer’s depiction of him as a “reliable ally”. If Trump didn’t deliver security guarantees for Ukraine, what was Starmer’s “Plan B”, he demanded to know – as if peace in Ukraine was a uniquely British responsibility. The SNP wanted Starmer to commit to sending frozen Russian funds to Kyiv to help the war effort. Starmer noted that the SNP’s support for unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain was looking even dafter than usual.
As so often in Commons set pieces based on each party’s MP numbers, Reform was the dog unable to bark. Earlier in the week Starmer accused Nigel Farage, quite unfairly, of “fawning over Putin”. Given his active alliance with Trump, the Ukraine issue is a veritable minefield for Farage right now. But remember this: we are only at the beginning of the end.