“It was the day Britain finally put Brexit behind it and assumed its new role in Europe,” said The Telegraph’s Europe editor James Crisp.
On Sunday Keir Starmer hosted European leaders in London – with “nothing less than the security of the continent at stake”. The prime minister proposed a “coalition of the willing”, led by France and the UK, Europe’s two nuclear and major military powers, and Germany, to protect Ukraine after a peace deal.
In the painful aftermath of Brexit, Britain “went missing from the world stage”. Now in Europe a “new world order is being built before our eyes”, and Britain is “leading the pack”.
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‘Back in the international diplomacy game’
Starmer’s first months in Downing Street have been “unsteady to say the least”, said Politico’s Esther Webber. Domestically, he has taken a “hammering in the polls”. But internationally, Starmer has played an “increasingly visible and assured role in transatlantic diplomacy”. One of his “supposed weaknesses” – a “lack of ideological conviction” – might make him “a suitable broker between players with wildly different outlooks”.
Starmer’s first meeting with Donald Trump actually “contained some wins” – “even if the biggest prize, American security guarantees for a Ukraine peace deal, remained elusive”. Labour insiders and European allies are “asking if his moment has arrived”.
Analysts agree that Starmer has “put the UK firmly back in the international diplomacy game”, said France 24. “Post-Brexit we’ve really struggled to find our identity,” said Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank. Starmer hasn’t had much foreign policy experience – but he has shown that he can “really step up on the world stage”, she told Agence France-Presse.
“We are never going to be the big world power that we once were,” she added. But this is a “sign of us finding our feet and finding where we potentially could lead”.
‘The purest wishful thinking’
Starmer deserves praise for “taking a leading role in Europe” after Trump’s “betrayal”, said The Independent’s John Rentoul. Some Labour figures thought this could be his “Falklands moment”: as when Margaret Thatcher reversed her unpopularity by being “resolute in an international crisis”. But that was the “purest wishful thinking”. Trump and J.D. Vance’s “ambush” of Zelenskyy – a “televised punishment beating” the Brits didn’t see coming – “wiped out” any “gains” from Starmer’s meeting with Trump. If Starmer thought he was a “bridge between Trump and European leaders”, Trump has “blown it up”.
Let’s not forget William Gladstone’s dictum, said The Times: the first principle of foreign policy is “good government at home”. Starmer should remember that voters have “more prosaic matters” on their minds than “international plaudits”. He will be judged on his domestic agenda: growing the economy and improving public services. His pledge to “ramp up defence spending” leaves an already cash-strapped government facing “unpalatable choices”.
International affairs are rightly consuming much of Starmer’s attention, but the “risk remains that a prime minister distracted by Ukraine will fail to drive forward the change this country needs”.
